


The Fool, Reversed

by SRH_Fade (hylian_reptile)



Category: Persona 4
Genre: AU, Gen, Suicide, heavily based off of nenilein's tumblr theories, if that's a thing fandoms do??, switchfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 20:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1871406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hylian_reptile/pseuds/SRH_Fade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Thank you for giving me the courage to change.” Yu Narukami is a rookie police detective partnered with his uncle in Inaba. Tohru Adachi is the transfer student protagonist that nobody wanted. // DISCONTINUED</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Inaba

You’re staring through the gas station window to the small TV perched on the counter. Silently, a heavily muscled man pounds bullets into somewhere off-screen, raw power shuddering in his hands. TV images are so realistic these days, you think, just as the station light catches on the glass between you and the image.

“ _Smile_ ,” your mother hisses.

“Welcome to Inaba,” says the gas station attendant. Your mother flashes her a once-beautiful smile through the window, and the attendant’s returning smile is amused. “Visiting, or here to stay?”

“Moving here for a year,” your mother says sweetly. Her nails dig into your thigh. You smile at the station attendant, and her eyes flicker towards you and away.

“Just for a year? Sounds like a peaceful vacation.”

“Yes, isn’t that right,” your mother agrees. “Tohru?”

“Yes, Mother,” you agree.

“Fill up the gas, Tohru.”

“Yes, Mother.”

You open the car door, but your mother’s hand seizes your wrist. “Smile,” she hisses again. “I have to live in this town for a year and everyone will know everyone. Don’t you dare screw this up so early.”

“Yes, Mother,” you say. Her fingers let go, leaving a long red scratch crawling up your skin, and you close the door hard. Her eyes flash behind the car window. You glance at the attendant, but she’s looking away. You unhook the gas pump and feed the machine your mother’s credit card.

“Oh, I can do that when I’m done with the windshield, you know,” the attendant says, not sounding all that concerned.

You pointedly jam the pump into the car in response. She is markedly ugly for a girl, you think. Scraggly bleached hair, face too thin, lips nonexistent, skin unhealthily pale. And too tall; your mother always says that a girl should be small enough to fit in her boyfriend’s pocket. Are all the girls in Inaba going to be this way? “It’s fine, thanks,” is all you say.

“It’s also my job,” says the attendant. She finishes the windshield and reaches for the gas pump. You flinch away, clutching the pump. The attendant pauses. Why won’t she leave you alone? Christ, you’ve already said you don’t want help. Mother will flip her shit if you don’t stand here holding this stupid pump.

Why did she do the windshield first? You stare at her hand reaching towards yours on the gas pump.

“Hey,” says the attendant. “If you’re going to be here a year, I recommend getting a job. Not much else to do here but study.” The attendant laughs, completely clueless to what she’d just said, and extends her hand again, not to take the pump from your hand but for a handshake. “We’re hiring, if you want to earn some cash. Think on it?”

You glance through the car window. Your mother’s eyes bore through the glass.

Slowly, you slide your fingers into her cold, slimy palm and suppress a shudder. Her skin has the texture of a maggot. When was the last time this lady washed her hands? You take your hand away as soon as is polite; you actually feel physically ill. Oh, god, everyone in this town is going to be like her, aren’t they? “Um, thanks,” you say, and breathe out again when the gas meter finishes and dings.

“Tohru, stop bothering her. She’s hard at work,” your mother says, rolling down the window. “Come back to the car.”

“Have a nice day,” says the attendant, blandly.

You pay the machine quickly and take the long way around the car to avoid brushing the gas attendant. If she wanted to fill up the gas for you so badly, she would have done that before washing the windshield, and you know your mother saw that. You slide into the car and close the door softly.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t slam the door,” she snaps, starting the car more forcefully than necessary. Her expression doesn’t change from its pleasant smile; the car is soundproofed, but the windows aren’t tinted. “Are you trying to get sassy with me? Break my car door to put more stress on your mother, who’s coming all the way to Hicksville to ensure your grades are good enough for university? It’s not _me_ going to university. _I_ pay for it. I pay for this whole trip for your sake.”

You barely keep your lips from tightening. The gas attendant is waving in the rear-view mirror. You hope she gets run over by a drunk customer.

“What were you talking with that attendant about? You don’t have time for friends. You should be studying. Were you talking with her about me? I bet you were.”

“I wasn’t,” you say. You watch the gas station and its attendant recede in the rear-view mirror. You can faintly see the same action movie playing in the station window, and regret not asking for the title. You wanted to see what was next.

“You shouldn’t make friends with a girl like that, anyway,” your mother says. “Remarkably ugly girl. Useless if a girl can’t even look presentable. Pay attention to me, Tohru. What was the last thing I said?”

“A girl is useless if she can’t look presentable,” you echo.

“Don’t speak to any whores either, Tohru-kun. Who knows what the girls out here are like. They probably go crazy, way out in the boonies like this, you know? And with all that influence from the media—have you seen that Risette? You can find a new place to live if you ever bring a girl like her home. I won’t stand for that stain on your life. You’ve seen the news reports about how that two-timing reporter went missing—that’s what happens to whores. _Smile_ , Tohru-kun. You’re coming with me to greet all our neighbors when we arrive. Why can’t you ever listen to anything I say? Why can’t you be like that?”

She points through the windshield at a dog lying on the side of the road, its tongue lolling through its fool’s grin, its leg is bent with one too many joints. You can see bone through the fur, but its eyes are completely blank.

“An idiot cripple?” you ask.

“At least its harmless,” she sniffs.

You close your eyes and imagine reaching through the gas station’s TV screen and pulling out the gun, heavy with bullets. Your eyes stay closed, and you dream of a Velvet Room.


	2. Yosuke Hanamura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introductions are slow work.

_EARLY MORNING_

No matter what the Velvet Room people say, you don’t believe in destiny. You believe in eventual inevitability.

End product can be calculated like a math midterm: if x, then y. People can be broken down into variables of looks, personality, social standing, wealth, whatever—the magic ticket being, of course, talent. With certain variables, a certain output is inevitable. You change a variable, you change the output. And the older you are (as your mother perfectly exemplifies), the harder it is to change your variables. One day, you’ll get a birthday card and realize that your variables are stuck, and your output is the small sum of who you are, and from there, it’s a one-track course until you die.

You’re best in your class at math. You’re best in your class in everything, actually. It is essential that you maintain your variables in peak condition, so that you may attend a prestigious university, obtain a wealthy job, marry a beautiful girl, and have your mother’s two-point-five grandchildren.

And your mother is a fucking _dumb bitch_ if she thinks transferring you to Nowheresville will help you concentrate on your studies any more than you did in the city, but you can hardly make like your more intelligent father and leave. At this rate, the universities will only wonder why you decided to take a year to attend a junkyard instead of a school for a year before throwing your application in the rejection pile. Maybe you can transfer out. Maybe if you’re really lucky, you can transfer back to your old school but, ah, you won’t bet on it.

You’re mentally cursing your piece of shit phone for not having a texting feature when you pass an idiot stuck in a garbage can beside a wrecked bike. You look around to make sure the coast is clear, then walk on by to your first day of school. As long as nobody saw, it doesn’t matter what you do.

***

_MORNING_

“Today we have a new transfer student from the city, Tohru Adachi,” says your homeroom teacher, sounding bored. “You can sit there.”

People are whispering because a new transfer student is probably the biggest thing to happen in a town like this. You calculate, quickly: your teachers won’t be able to teach for shit, you’ll be learning almost a review of what you’ve already pushed through in your old cram school, and the homework will be tedious and time-consuming. At lunch, you’ll be surrounded by boys and girls alike asking about the city schools, why you moved, what the city was like, how you like Inaba. It’ll probably be the longest conversation you’ll have with any girl in this school, and you’re not fooling yourself by thinking you’ll survive it without putting your foot in your mouth. If you’re really lucky, a boy might ask you to join his failing club, which you’ll have to decline because of your studies. When they finish the checklist, they’ll vanish, on to talk about the next trivial aspect of their small-town lives. Tomorrow, you’ll eat lunch alone.

“Nice to meet you,” you lie, and don’t meet anyone’s eyes when you move to sit down. Your teacher begins a review of algebra you already know, and solves two equations on the board wrong. You eat lunch at your desk with a good third of your class, and answer, in this exact order, the name of your city high school, your reason for moving, what the city was like, and how you like Inaba. You accidentally call Suzume-san “Suzako-san,” the name of her friend who was sitting next to her; then proceed to stammer, “I’m so sorry, Suzune-san.” A boy invites you to join the basketball club, which you decline on reflex. They drift away, laughing, and you finish lunch alone.

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

“You’re not studying today,” your mother says when you get back from school. She’s arranging her hair to look like she didn’t arrange it with the care and attention of an open-heart surgeon. “Tohru-kun, turn off the TV for me.”

You let the commercial for the local Junes play first. For all its manufactured advertising, it does look like a nice place on the other side of the TV.

“First we’re going to walk down the shopping district and say hello to our neighbors,” she prattles. “Then we’re going to meet your new tutor. He’s good at his job and well-respected, according to what I heard, so shape up and don’t give him any back-talk or stupid answers. I don’t want to have to find another one.

“And I know they found that whore reporter’s body hanging somewhere,” she says, “but don’t be crass and mention it. Nobody wants to talk about murder.”

You haven’t even finished unpacking. There’s homework to get caught up on from transferring late into the semester, and the small remnants of your city life are still lying scattered in boxes in the middle of the empty room. There’s not a single piece of furniture to break up the wide walls—not a couch to relax on or table to eat at. The small rented house is a blank space to temporarily hold your things. And here you both are, in the middle of nofuckingwhere, for the sake of “ _studying_ ,” and the first order of business is to _not study._

Your mother applies blush to her cheekbones using the only sliver of light leaking through the blinds, eyes nowhere but on her own in the compact mirror. You take a moment to swallow the vicious churning in your stomach, and brace yourself.

The shopping district is, of course, literally _a single street_. And it’s cramped, and it’s damn near empty, and it’s old and low-budget and falling apart. You’d think a shopping district would at least have a _clothes_ store—what do these people wear, tree leaves? Wrap themselves in raw textiles from Tatsumi’s? You might have cried if you weren’t so furious that all your expectations had been completely on the dot. Not even anywhere you could take your textbooks to pretend to study. Well done, Mother, you think, for actually finding a place where there’s nothing to do _but_ study.

You wonder if you could somehow intercept the phone bill and delete a call record if you ever find the time and privacy to call Aoyama-kun from your old homeroom. If only for the pleasure of defying her, even if she would never know.

It’ll have to be later. For now, you’re your mother’s conversational weapon of choice: “Purchasing supplies for school,” and “Yes, we just moved here from the city,” and “Aiko Adachi and my son, Tohru,” and “Smile, Tohru-kun,” and “Oh, just a change of pace, haha,” and “Speak when spoken to, Tohru-kun,” and “What a quaint little shop you have!” and “Yes, Yasogami High. Only a first-year,” and “Interior designer, taking the year off.” What utter shit—you can’t believe these hillbillies can actually swallow this without running off like spooked prey. Don’t they have any sense of self-preservation? They can’t miss how she buys all these unnecessary knickknacks from every shop; nobody actually needs all these materials unless they’re buying connections. Maybe they just don’t care? Sure, nobody really wants to complain when you speak to the wallet. Then, you think with resentment, it’s just you who takes the consequences; because it’s you carrying her growing number of shopping bags, and both you and your mother know all these trinkets will end up in your room, with all the other things your mother doesn’t want to see.

“Don’t you dare make that face around other people,” your mother snaps as you approach some grimy Chinese diner. You do your best mocking impression of the crippled dog on the road. Your mother pauses, and for one moment you’re terrified your sarcasm has landed you in the deepest shit you’ve been in since you skipped homeroom four years ago; but then she nods and says, “Much better. Follow me closely and learn something. This is necessary.”

Please. She doesn’t like tofu _or_ Chinese food. There’s nothing about this that isn’t unnecessary. The trinkets, the ass-kissing, the phone-number collecting, the _desperation_. What does Mother care about these people you’ll both never see again after the school year’s done? Why does she need people to gossip with? What’s the _point_ of small talk? Nobody learns anything, nobody cares about each other, nobody will do you any favors. Your mother is spending an entire afternoon opening channels of communication so she can waste her days talking about nothing with people she doesn’t like and people who don’t like her. Get a fucking job. Be productive. Do something. Be somebody. She doesn’t need anybody else to do that. You can’t think of a single thing you can’t accomplish entirely on your own—you’re proof enough of that.

Your consolation is that there’s only one street to cover; you can’t imagine how horrifying this adventure would be if you had a _real_ shopping district to cover. After this, you both can go home and—

“We need to talk to the employees at Junes,” your mother says.

You wonder what would happen if you threw all her bags of bought relationships down on the street and walked away. Then you follow her to Junes.

“Apparently Junes is putting other shops out of business,” your mother murmurs, jabbing the elevator button. “Already three have shut down, and the Konishi’s store is likely next on the line. Don’t associate yourself too closely with Junes, Tohru-kun. Deny that we’ve done grocery shopping at Junes in the city.”

“The Junes commercial is irritating anyway,” you say. It’s actually true, you’re just not irritated by it personally.

Your mother shakes her head, pushing you into the elevator. “No, everyone has Junes products in their stores, even if they don’t like it. Pay attention to the details, Tohru-kun. Junes is hated and needed, so they’re here to stay.”

You did notice. Just because you didn’t immediately blab about it to other housewives doesn’t mean you didn’t notice. “That’s unfortunate,” you say, because it is. Stuck managing a store everyone hated in a town that had nothing to offer you in return?

“It’s irrelevant to you. Just follow everyone else and keep your mouth shut and you won’t get caught in the controversy.”

You both wander around the grocery department, but apparently people in Junes are actually _working_ , and much less inclined to shoot the breeze. You would be delighted at your mother’s lack of success if she weren’t entirely undeterred. Instead, you take the time to purchase several heads of cabbages with her credit card without her noticing, and hide the cabbages amongst her other purchases. It’ll be cabbages and tofu from Marukyu tonight, you think gleefully. She might dislike tofu, but she _despises_ cabbages.

You and your mother have wandered into the electronics department when you see a teenager arranging widescreen TVs, and you know almost instantly that he’s your ticket out of this store and back to the quiet of your room. Dyed hair reeks of ex-city residents like yourselves; that wouldn’t mean anything if he were wearing a nametag, which he’s not—so either he’s new (unlikely, as he obviously knows what he’s doing with the TVs) or he doesn’t actually work here, he only helps out. And nobody helps out unless it benefits them, or helps avoid punishment. Therefore, he’s highly likely a relative of the people who’d been transferred here to run Junes when it opened, because with Junes’ shit reputation amongst locals, it was definitely not anybody native to this town. Yasogami High uniform under his apron means you’re your mother’s ticket to an unsuspicious conversation, especially because he looks older than you and she can pull the “please be a good influence” card. And his widened eyes when he spots you means he knows you’re a face he hasn’t seen before, and he’s bored enough to care.

Alright, Mother, you think. Do your stuff, and then let’s get the hell out of here.

“Excuse me, do you work here?” your mother asks, advancing right on cue. “We were thinking of purchasing a TV.”

 _What the fuck_. Your mother can’t afford a TV from Junes.

“Good timing!” says the kid with obnoxious cheer. “We just got a new shipment in. You…” He’s looking at you uncertainly, and you can picture the rusty gears in his head struggling to put connections together. “You’re not from around here, are you?” he asks cautiously, like he barely dares to hope.

“No,” your mother says warmly, “we just moved here two days ago. We’re going around to see the important parts of the neighborhood today.”

“I can imagine that didn’t take too long,” the kid says, then looks immediately embarrassed. You’d like him more for saying it like it is if he didn’t obviously wish he could take it back.

“Oh, only the important parts of town,” your mother says.

“Er, yes,” the kid says. “That’s what I meant. Hey, that’s a Yasogami uniform, isn’t it?” he says quickly.

“This is Tohru Adachi,” your mother says. “He’s a first-year.”

“So you’re my underclassman, huh?” says the kid with a (practiced) grin. “Yosuke Hanamura.”

“Nice to meet you,” you say.

“Still in high school and already working hard,” your mother presses on. “What a good member of society.”

Yosuke flushes. She's laying the praise on too thick. “Well, I… I’m really just trying to help out my dad, you know.”

Your mother tilts her head. “Oh?”

“He’s the manager here, so… just doing my part.”

Your mother glances at you. Bingo.

“Is that so?” she says. “That’s so good of you, helping your family out. Please be a good influence on Tohru, wouldn’t you?”

“Hey, sure, no problem. Us city kids have got to stick together.” He winks at you. You wonder how many times he’s practiced that in the mirror, and you return with your most harmless smile. “Can I help you guys picking out a TV? I gotta recommend the forty-two inch; it can still connect to the Internet, which is way cool, but not as expensive as the fifty-six.”

“Actually, I’d love to meet your father sometime,” your mother says. “Someone to talk with about the city and moving to Inaba. When he’s not working, of course.”

Yosuke’s smile falters. “Well… he might…” Spit it out, you think. “He might be on break now,” he says at last. He injects more cheer into his smile, reminiscent of pumping air into a punctured tire. If he didn’t want to say it, you think, he should have just lied. “I’ll go see if I can find him.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” your mother says, smiling. “Thank you, Yosuke-kun.”

Yosuke disappears down an aisle, fiddling with his MP3. “Don’t associate yourself with slow-witted whiners like him,” your mother says. You concur, but would rather die than agree out loud with your mother.

A few minutes later, a tall, broad man rounds the corner; even if you hadn’t known he was the manager, you would have assumed from the sheer authority in his shoulders. Your mother launches into a conversation about where you used to live, where Hanamura used to live, how Yasogami High is—the same old excuse about “Tohru needing to focus on his studies.” Fine, whatever; this could take a while. You lug your mother’s trinkets over to the TVs and look for an on switch. The chances of her actually buying one aren’t high—you wouldn’t trust her to give an excuse for conversation that’s necessarily true—so this is the closest you’re going to get to such a nice TV until god knows when. You’re not even allowed to watch TV at home. Man, you just want some entertainment in this godforsaken town.

Apparently, someone decided that what a TV needs is to be able to connect to _YouTube_ , so there’s a whole built-in section to browse YouTube videos. You browse illegally-uploaded action movies just for something to do with your hands, and manage to find the first five minutes of the film you’d seen at the gas station; sadly, high-def screen doesn’t improve a Chinese bootleg. You watch as a pixelated car blows up via impossible Hollywood physics. The action hero comes back onscreen with his machine gun and starts gunning down enemies. Or… what you assume are enemies. Don’t movies always work that way?

It’s satisfying until the camera switches to a shot of fake blood all over the movie set, and corpse dummies under car tires. You feel nauseous; blood always did made you feel queasy. You reach around the TV for the off switch, leaning on the screen to leave a nice handprint for Yosuke to clean up later, and almost fall over.

For a second you’re terrified you’ve pushed the TV over and that’s why you lost your balance, but the TV is still standing. Your hand is touching empty air. Your arm is up to its elbow _through_ the TV screen, and it didn’t come out the other end.

“Adachi-kun?” you hear faintly, and you turn around to see Yosuke in the aisle entrance, staring in horror at your arm. Shit, is all you can think. There’s got to be a way to get out of this one.

Yosuke begins, “What are you—“ before you mother rounds the corner and you yank your arm out of the TV. “I think I’ll purchase the forty-two inch,” she’s telling Hanamura. “Tohru-kun, don’t stand so close to the electronics.”

“Go tell our deliverymen to pack up a forty-two, Yosuke. Delivery today to this address,” Hanamura says, and hands Yosuke a form.

You and Yosuke stare at each other from across the long aisle.

“Sure thing, Dad,” Yosuke says, and without breaking eye contact, walks away and out of sight.

You cannot believe your mother actually bought the TV.

***

_EVENING_

“You can meet your tutor tomorrow,” your mother says. “Read the instruction manual and set up the TV for me, Tohru.”

She shuts the bathroom door and seconds later, you can hear the shower water running through the pipes. You turn on the yellowish light and stare at the TV in its box.

Your mother takes, on average, a half-hour shower. It’s 6:37 PM. You can do this.

Cut the zipties, cut the duct tape; slide the TV out of the box. Press your hands to the screen to no effect—must be plugged in and operational. Breeze through the instruction manual in thirty seconds. Plug in power cord to outlet. Balance TV on a low table. Press the power button. Nothing. Press hands to screen. Nothing. That’s not right; you know it was this TV that you put your hand through. Thoroughly read the instruction manual for five minutes before your mother drops something loudly in the shower and you panic. Plug random cords into random holes. Nothing. Change batteries in the remote. Thoroughly read the instruction manual, cover to cover, for twelve minutes. Rearrange cords in correct order; shove the HDMI cable into place with shaking fingers. Press hands to scr—

“Good boy,” you mother says expressionlessly, wrapped in a bathrobe. “Don’t put your dirty fingers on the screen.”

You glance at the clock. 7:01 PM. The _stupid woman_ couldn’t have wasted more water today, like she does on every other fucking day of her life? Goddamn her. God _damn_ her. She couldn’t let you have just this?

Your mother idles in the kitchen, not even bothering to put on her nightclothes yet, as if you weren’t even there. She’s not looking, but if you put your hand _through the TV_ you can bet she’d notice. You seethe in silence, and watch intently as your mother unwraps the cabbage heads and her eyes narrow. You turn away to stare at the window, making sure she can’t see the reflection of your tight-lipped smile in the TV screen.

“I’m tired. Feed yourself tonight,” she snaps, and stalks into her bedroom.

You wait all of two seconds before you press your fingers to the screen. Sure enough, the screen ripples and changes to static, the tips of your fingers breaking what looks like surface tension and sinking through until your fingers have disappeared. It feels like a thin layer of water gripping your knuckles, with nothing but air on your skin on the other side.

You remove your fingers. You’re not putting any more of yourself at risk until you know what this thing is.

In third grade, one of your teachers gave you a telescope, “to foster wonder about our world” or some such bullshit. You rummage through three boxes as quietly as you can before you find it, slightly cracked from where your mother threw it in with her wooden figurines and you didn’t bother to rescue it. The stars aren’t visible in the polluted city, and you don’t care about stars anyway, but now you’re glad you kept it. Slowly, you push the end of the telescope against the TV screen, and it turns to static and gives way.

You put your eye to the other end. You see nothing but white. It doesn’t look like there’s even a floor below. No—you see _something_ —definite movement, the shadowed outline of something _moving_ in the fog—

The doorbell rings and you jump, nearly poking your eye out. You sit back and take three solid seconds to twist your expression into the ugliest scowl you can manage. Who rings strangers’ doors this late at night? That’s supposed to be rude. you've _done_ your socializing for the day; you filled your quota! Hell, for all you know, it could be the psycho who strung a dead woman up on a TV antennae. It really is the boonies out here, good god; probably one of those towns where nobody locks their doors. Why is everyone so _hellbent_ on interrupting?

“Tohru-kun! Open the door!” your mother shouts. “And be pleasant!”

You tuck the telescope behind the TV and smooth out your uniform shirt. You resolve not to punch the asshole who interrupted.

A young man in a suit—maybe late twenties?—stands in the doorway. You notice the police badge on his suit first, and for a second you’re delighted that your mother finally fucked up and he’s come to arrest her; but then you notice the pack of side dishes and tin of cookies he’s holding, and the small girl hiding behind his leg. Goddammit, housewarming gifts. Now your mother has something to eat other than cabbages and tofu.

“Sorry for intruding,” the man says. “I would have come earlier, but I just managed to get off work. I hope it’s not too late?”

“Of course not,” you say. You don’t move from the doorway. “May I help you?”

He looks at you with the most unnervingly calm stare you’ve ever seen—seeing everything, you realize with fury, and giving nothing away but the sense of a peace offering. “I’m Yu Narukami,” he says. “We wanted to welcome you and your family to the neighborhood. Nanako-chan and my uncle live just down the road.” He offers one bag of side dishes and hands the cookies to the girl (Nanako, probably), who takes it and shyly offers it as well.

You take the gifts. The cookies are still warm from the oven, and the side dishes look homemade. Your stomach rumbles against your will. Narukami looks concerned for point-five seconds before he catches your eye and his face smooths.

Holy shit, he’s good.

You hate him.

“Tohru-kun, who is it?” your mother’s voice says.

“Neighbors,” you say, and haul the food off to the kitchen. Your mother can handle _Yu Narukami_ and his calm, smug face.

“We brought housewarming gifts,” Narukami is saying to your mother. “I apologize for intruding so late at night; I just got off work.”

Your mother fidgets in place; she washed all her makeup off, and though you bought her time to change into clothes, she didn’t have time to reapply. Good-looking man within two decades of her age? Of course she wants to throw herself at him. “Ah, you must work hard. What is it you do?”

“I’m officially a forensic psychologist at the police station here,” says Narukami, “but it’s a small station, and most of the work I do is detective work with my uncle. I also tutor students part-time.”

“Oh! You’re _that_ Narukami!” Your mother laughs, hitting each high note precisely so it sounds like a laugh. “Come in, come in. Tohru-kun, this is your tutor.”

 _Shit_.

“Oh,” is all you say, and stare at Narukami. He steps through the door and looks back at you. He came, you realize, because you’re going to be his student for the next year, and he’s come to make the all-important first impression on his own terms—all this housewarming bullshit, the cookies and the dishes, an excuse and a prop. Like your mother, prowling up and down the shopping district, cornering shop owners and sealing the meeting with a purchase, but Narukami’s sealing this deal with food.

“Nice to meet you,” you say. You smile and wave.

“I also help Nanako-chan with her homework at around the same time,” Narukami says. He gestures to Nanako hiding behind his leg, but he won’t stop looking you in the eye, as if he were speaking to you instead of your mother. “We usually meet at the Dojima house; it’s down the road from here.”

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d really like Tohru-kun to focus as hard as he can on his schoolwork,” your mother says. “Would it trouble you too much to meet here instead?” You shoot her a look; she’s pushing it a little far.

“We can definitely try it,” Narukami says, very evenly. “Nanako-chan? Do you mind coming to the Adachi’s some nights?”

Nanako shakes her head.

“Would you like something to drink?” your mother asks, already moving towards the refrigerator. “How about you, little girl?”

Nanako clutches Narukami’s leg even tighter and makes a small noise. Your mother smiles, close-lipped, even as her nose wrinkles. Narukami’s hand moves suddenly to cradle Nanako’s head.

“Perhaps just water,” Narukami says. “We won’t be here long.”

Your mother’s next smile says entirely too much; it pleases her to serve guests drinks, even if they only asked for water out of politeness. It makes you uncomfortable just to look at her smile. “Tohru-kun, why don’t you go study? Narukami-san and I are going to talk.”

“Tohru-kun can stay,” Narukami-san says immediately. “It’d be a good opportunity for him to get to know his tutor.”

Your mother waves a hand. “No need. Tohru-kun, go.”

You swallow hard. The TV stands silent just three feet away. Your mother turns her back, and Narukami’s head tilts just an inch.

“Actually, it’s getting late,” says Narukami, checking his watch. “Dojima-san will wonder where Nanako went, you understand. Nanako, how about we help Adachi-san unpack the dishes and then we go back?”

“Oh, no,” your mother says, flustered, “there’s really no need—“

“We’d like to. We’re sure you had a long day,” says Narukami. “Nanako?”

She hops to her feet and putters into the kitchen; still protesting, your mother follows them out of sight. “Cabbages?” you hear Narukami say, sounding amused.

You have, at most, ten seconds. You do the calculations.

You’ll go up to your room, where you’ll get caught up on schoolwork you already learned and your classmates already did. Narukami will take Nanako and his smug fucking face and leave, and your mother will lecture you about all the things you did wrong tonight. You’ll go to school tomorrow and maybe field a few dozen other questions from nosy students pumping the city-boy transfer student for information, and then eat alone with all your lack of friends. You’ll avoid Yosuke, the only potential friendship you have in this godforsaken place that was ruined because a TV decided to swallow your hand. You’ll attend afternoon classes, and then you’ll come straight home to be tutored even _further_ by Narukami and his smug fucking face for _hours_ , and then go to your room and do _more_ schoolwork, and then wake up the next morning and attend morning classes alone and eat lunch alone and attend afternoon classes alone and be tutored by fucking _Narukami_ and study alone again and eat dinner alone and again and agai—

You have six seconds. You watch the kitchen doorway carefully and dip your fingers through the screen, then your hand. You have no idea how you’re going to explain this if they walk out now. You’re up to your shoulder—static enveloping your chest—

“Tohru!” your mother calls.

You pitch backwards, and fall through.


	3. Chie Satonaka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's too early in the day for this.

_“The Velvet Room does not help its guests,” says the old man. “The Velvet Room_ provides _. We like to keep our guests’ options available—we consider it the highest form of service, the best line of work. But the Velvet Room does not help, does not lead, does not even assist or intervene in the fulfillment of its guests’ contracts. All we do is protect the opportunities that are rightfully yours.”_

_“And so the choices you make are only your own,” the young woman murmurs. “Even the ones you make in believing you have none.”_

_The foggy water slides past the glass windows. The control panel has no labels on its buttons, and none of them are lit. There is no sound but your breathing. “Are we going up,” you ask, “or down?”_

_They look to you patiently, waiting._

* * *

 

_EVENING_

You can’t stop smiling.

Look at all this open space! Well—no, you can’t look at it, because of all the fog. You’re somewhere in the middle of a vast, three-dimensional maze of metal walkways and ladders—like a construction site? A TV studio’s set, but bigger? The backstage riggings of a theatre? You can’t see the end; there’s fog thick enough that you can barely see your own hand, and no matter where you turn the walkways stretch out further into the white distance. You can’t see where you would have ended up if you hadn’t landed on the walkway. You can’t see the entrance you fell from. You most certainly can’t see an exit. The world goes on for infinite space and, possibly, infinite time.

Goodness, you’ll just have to explore _all_ of it, won’t you? All this wide free space. Nobody to stop you. Nobody to deal with. Just every possible pathway to everywhere. You step forward without fear, and dare to straighten your back. You can take up space. There’s space for you here.

You feel like you’re going to start skipping, your feet are so light. You dare to even crack a smile. Are you dreaming? Does it matter?

If you begin to feel tired after fifteen minutes, it’s only because you’re out of shape from sitting at a desk at all hours. The world stretches on and you keep walking. When you next check your watch, an hour and a half has passed, there’s still so many places to go, and you feel like your head is going to split open—nausea from not eating dinner? The fog tastes chalky on your tongue and slimy in your lungs. You can’t see anything moving in the fog anywhere, and the walkways never end and never change.

You still can’t stop grinning. You feel lightheaded from feeling like you’re going to puke your guts out and absolutely _great_ for no reason.

So you flip open your phone to call Aoyama-kun.

Aoyama-kun is a quiet boy who’d sat next to you in homeroom, back at your old high school in the city. He’d been in the library a lot, and he was always next to you, and one day you ended up sitting at his library table and three hours later you were working through algebra together. He hadn’t had the best grades, though neither did he have the worst; to be honest, a lot of your relationship had been part-tutoring, part-study group. In that sense, he’d been lucky to have you as a friend; he was always barely in the top hundred in school rankings, and you’d taken consistent first for the last three years. He didn’t like noise when he studied, and was always suggesting new places to go (many of them you’d conveniently neglected to inform your mother of when you visited them, as she’d only take the opportunity to bitch you out). He had a fondness for physical paper maps, and would mark down good coffee shops for studying there. He’d also mark down spots for dates, and his map had five red X’s where he’d confessed to five different girls in five different locations and been rejected five different times (all in the short time you knew him). You think you were probably more bothered by his failures than he was; you’d asked if he wanted to maybe take a break, blow off steam, get some post-rejection ice cream, and he would only put his head down and keep working. He did a lot of that. You’re not sure that in the entire time you knew him, you two ever made eye contact.

He refused to speak for himself, either, when your mother found out how frequently you studied together. You remember hearing her voice on the phone, incredulous and panicked, and watching Aoyama-kun put his head back down and scratch out the next equation.

You don’t really remember what his voice sounds like, especially not now when the pounding headache is making it hard to think. You barely see the ‘no reception’ signal. Which is a little disappointing, you’ll admit, but maybe you’ll call later. Or maybe you won’t! Gosh, you have no idea what’s going to happen next. You might not ever go to school again. You might not go home. Who knows what you’ll find in this fog?

You force your fingers to shut your phone and welcome the slimy fog into your lungs, grinning like a loon, when you hear screaming.

It’s the first noise you’ve heard in almost two hours; you nearly jump out of your skin. It’s a woman, far off in the distance, sounding like her limbs are being torn from their sockets inch by inch, and you have no idea where it’s coming from. Nothing looks different. _Is_ anything different?

You break into a jog, then a sprint when the screams are neither closer nor farther. The clanging of the metal walkway under your feet doesn’t drown out her voice in the slightest. She sounds just up ahead, and just behind, and just over the railing to the left, _and_ the right.

“Hello?” you shout. “Hello!?”

She doesn’t stop, but you think you can hear someone—some _thing_ —breathing. You turn to your right, and for the first time, you see shapes moving in the fog.

“Hello?” you say again.

The shapes seem to pause, then grow. Coming closer.

You see teeth. Teeth the size of your head.

The hair on the back of your neck stands up when it finally hits you: You’re in a foreign dimension inside a hideously expensive TV and you can’t see for shit while you listen to a woman being tortured in surround sound and a set of teeth the size of small tombstones come right towards you. And you just shouted like a fucking broadcast of exactly where you are. You’re so stupid. You’re _so_ _stupid_ , thinking this place was cool and new and exciting. You haven’t seen a single person in the last hour and that’s probably for a good _reason_. You don’t want to die. You don’t want to be here. You don’t even want to talk to people, let alone fight someone for your life.

Your muscles feel like they’ve turned to ice.

Can you remember where you came from? Why didn’t you mark which walkway you came down? Should you turn back? The woman chokes on her breath and pushes sound out of her lungs even more desperately. You see nothing but fog and the teeth coming closer and closer, and your vision swims from your pounding headache.

You clear the slick sound of saliva. You feel your limbs begin to shake, and you stumble into a blind sprint. Your head spins with the sudden movement; you bang into the left railing hard and push on.

The fog rushes into your lungs and you feel another wave of spinning. Is it the _fog_ that’s making you feel like this? The fear? Or is this just a bad dream? This can’t be real; you went through a TV, for god’s sake. This isn’t real, it just feels real. You have to get out of the fog, but you can’t see the end. The woman’s high note of pain rings on and on; did she stay in the fog too long, is that why she’s—whatever she is? The wave of endless possible walkways seem to multiply, twice as many corners to turn, too many choices to make, none of them clear.

There’s a breath on the back of your neck.

You shriek and trip and skid across the metal walkway. There’s no one behind you, your knee is wrecked and dripping blood, the woman is sobbing and screaming in alternating breaths. Shit, shit, shit. Don’t predators usually smell the blood of their wounded prey?

“I’ll do anything,” you gasp, hiding your face in your arms, and realize it’s true. You’re begging thin air and you don’t to go through what that woman is going through, doesn’t even want to know what’s happening to her as long as you get out with all your skin. “I’ll do anything, I just don’t want to die, please…”

There’s a footstep—not footsteps, walking towards or away from you, just a step singular. You freeze. Your vision swims; you feel like you’re going to throw up. Your lizard brain screams at you to play dead. The woman screams with all the air in her lungs.

Someone is standing on the walkway. You don’t see features. You see an outline in fog, and a glint of sickly yellow.

“My mother will be alone,” you whisper.

The woman sounds like she’s inches from your head, her pain pouring out of her mouth and into your ears. Your heartbeat is pounding in your skull; you barely feel your skinned knee for the blood speeding through your veins. Every breath you take is shallow and deafeningly loud.

The woman stops screaming.

When you look up, the person is gone.

You glance in every direction, then swing yourself and your damaged leg off the railing onto the lower walkway and bolt for it. Your knee is throbbing and you feel your lungs tightening in your chest with every loud clang of your feet on the walkway, but your lizard brain tells your rabbit heart that now’s the time to run, not hide. The fog rushes towards you as you speed through the white world, and even as you run you imagine teeth emerging from the fog in front of you and yourself speeding headlong into its jaws, unable to stop.

And then your feet hit concrete, and you stumble to a halt, gasping for breath. It’s a clearing—the first you’ve seen. The fog is thinner here, so thin you can see the end of the clearing some fifty feet away, all enclosed in sturdy railings. In the center is a circular pattern, crime scene outlines of corpses strewn across it. And there, sitting neatly, buzzing with static, is a stack of TVs.

You drag yourself to the TVs and shove your hand through without much thought; it occurs to you that you have no idea where this goes. Panting, you stagger in a circle, trying to make your brain think rationally, when you see shapes in the direction you came from. It doesn’t even occur to you to move. You stand there watching them come closer; as first you see the teeth, bright white squares grinding the air between them, then the tongue, dripping saliva, then the lips, stretched wide and manic, and then… nothing else. It’s a featureless, gaudily-painted skull with only teeth for eating, and it’s taking its sweet time coming for you.

You scream, and the woman in the distance screams with you. The mouth looks _delighted_.

You throw yourself through the TV screen as the woman begins to sob.

* * *

 

You hear screaming.

“—through the _TV_ , he just came out of it, like his whole body—oh my god, that’s _blood_ —“

“Who the hell—“

You scramble to your feet, but your ruined knee buckles and you end up dragging yourself away from the voice like a drunken bug; there’s so much light and you feel like you can’t breathe—

“—down! Hey, it’s me! Breathe, okay? Deep breaths. Oh god, what am I doing. Um, calm down, look at me. Chie, it’s just his knee, I don’t see anything else. Adachi-kun, can you hear me?”

When you open your eyes, you’re unsurprised to find yourself in Junes, with Yosuke Hanamura’s terrified face front and center of your vision. You must have subconsciously put it together from Yosuke’s voice. You take another shaky breath and wrap your shaking hands around yourself. You’re back in reality, you’re in public; you have to pull yourself together.

“Dude, what _happened_?” Yosuke reaches out without thinking, but freezes and withdraws as if he’s afraid you’ll bite his fingers off. _Rude_. “Um—Chie, do you have a bottle of water on you?”

“Oh, I, um—yeah, I should, somewhere—“

“Thanks,” says Yosuke, voice cracking; he coughs loudly, trying to get the shakiness out of his voice. “You okay?”

You’re feeling like your skull is too small, that’s what you feel like. You close your eyes.

“Whoa, man, stay with me! Don’t go into the light, whatever you do! Adach—“

“Shut the fuck up,” you whine.

“That’s—okay, four consecutive words, that’s a… good sign… probably… I think?”

“Here,” says a girl’s voice, and you crack your eyes open again. A girl with short brown hair is holding out a thermos like she’s half-afraid you’re going to die if you don’t drink and half-afraid you’re going to grow extra limbs. You take the thermos before Mama Yosuke decides he wants to spoonfeed you water.

“Dude,” says Yosuke-senpai, “you look like hell.”

“You look like you came out of a _TV_ ,” the girl says, incredulously. “Yosuke, what kind of TVs has Junes been ordering?!”

“Firstly, what does somebody typically look like when they’ve come out of a TV?”

“Yosuke!”

“Sorry, just—this guy came by earlier and accidentally stuck his arm through a forty-two inch screen. Sorry for not sharing your hysteria.” Yosuke laughs a little. It sounds hysterical.

“The TV my mother bought,” you say, in a very small voice. “I went through it.”

“Oh my god,” says the girl.

“What, like your whole _body_?"

"Of  _course_ his whole body! He just did that!"

"Well, I mean--"

“Yosuke, he really doesn’t look like he’s in any shape to talk,” Chie (?) says, sounding more like she’s in no shape to comprehend it. “We gotta get him out of here!”

“Man, you’re lucky Junes is closed early and I picked today to clean up after-hours,” Yosuke says. “C’mon, there’s a futon in the break room.”

You try to stand, but your knee chooses now to feel like it’s on fire. A pair of strong arms wrap around your chest. “Chie, help me out here."

"We need to put a bandage on that leg!"

“No, stop,” you say, probably. The last thing you want is other people touching you right now; you’re shaking too hard with left-over adrenaline and fear to decipher what to do for this new social hurtle. Another set of arms add themselves to your support, and you’re so exhausted. All you want is for them to go away.

* * *

 

_EARLY MORNING_

You wake up to the sound of the news.

“…discovered in the fog today. The police are investigating Taro Namatame, who was involved with both victims, as a possible suspect, but no other details have been released—“

You groan and roll over.

“Oh good, you’re up,” a voice says. The volume of the news significantly lowers. “Sorry, didn’t really want to try poking you or anything.”

You crack your eyes open. Yosuke is slumped in a chair, rubbing his eyes and looking exhausted. “How do you feel?” he asks. “Any better?”

What the hell does he care? You groan and roll over the other way.

“That bad, huh? Ugh…” Yosuke stands and cracks what sounds like every inch of his spine. “I kind of hate to have to say this, but we’re not supposed to be here. We gotta split before the first-shift employees open Junes.”

You open your eyes.

Holy shit. You’ve been out of the house for the entire night. You haven’t studied, you don’t have your homework—you don’t have your uniform, you’re in your torn and bloody pajamas, you don’t have your shoes—did your mother realize you were gone? Did she call the police?

Your mother is going to _murder_ you.

You sit up too fast. Your stomach heaves, and you lean over the side of the futon and throw up.

“Oh god, okay, um, lie back down, I got this,” Yosuke blabbers. “Man, I will remember this the next time someone tells me I should have lots of children…”

You lean back and stare at the tiny splatter of stomach acid on the linoleum floor. All things considered, puke is _much_ more obnoxious than a handprint to wipe up. You watch as Yosuke cleans it with antibacterial wipes, grumbling the entire way, but you can hear he doesn’t mean it. It would bother you less, you think, if he did. “Okay, let’s scram,” he says, tossing the rag in a sink. “You need help?”

“That’s okay,” you say. Every inch of you aches, but you don’t want to deal with him touching you.

“Where do you live? I’ve got a bike—it’s kind of a piece of trash, and people leave garbage cans out on the road right in the bike lane way too often, but I’ll go slow. Hey,” he says, when you don’t respond. “Adachi-kun?”

Oh, you realize. The idiot who’d crashed into the trash can had been _him_. Now, wasn’t that properly terrible of you, not helping someone who was so eager to help you? No, you think quickly, he probably has some ulterior motive. He’s probably doing it because people falling out of TVs is the most exciting thing that’s happened since he moved here. Ugh, it’s too early in the day to be thinking about this.

“Adachi-kun?” Yosuke is saying. “C’mon, you can’t walk anywhere in this shape. Go home and sleep it off.”

“I can’t,” you mutter. “There’s school today.”

“You can’t be serious,” Yosuke says, half-laughing. “You look like you need to sleep at least another day. And I mean, I tried, but I don’t think that bandage on your leg is quality work.”

You drag your phone out of your pocket. You have twenty minutes to get to school. “No, it’s good enough,” you say, and offer your most harmless, most apologetic smile. “I still have lots to catch up on. Late transfer and all. You know, right?”

“You’re serious,” Yosuke says in disbelief.

“You have to get to school too, right? I’ll just come with you.”

“I’m late all the time,” he says dismissively. “You, though…”

“Please? I won’t be any trouble,” you say, a little whining. Your heartbeat picks up at the mere _thought_ of going home now and having to explain this… this thing. And what about your attendance record, and all the topics that a teacher can cover in one day alone…

Yosuke looks at you doubtfully, then sighs. “You’re crazy. What size uniform are you?”

You blink. You hadn’t even thought of that. “I… Uh—“

“Just kidding, I only have one size. But at least you’re not any bigger than me.” He rummages in a cupboard, pulls out what must be a spare uniform for emergencies, and holds it up. “Not that bad. It’ll pass, I guess. And I’ve got shoes around here somewhere…”

“Th-Thank you. _So_ much,” you say, a little numbly. Too early in the day to be thinking about this. “I’m… I’m sorry for the trouble, I didn’t think about the uniform.”

“Hey, it’s fine. But you better sleep through every single one of your classes, man; I’m gonna check,” says Yosuke. “Get one of your first-year friends to take notes for you, okay?”

“Yeah, good thinking. Thanks for the advice,” you say. You don’t have any friends to take notes for you.

* * *

 

_MORNING_

The entire day is a slug. You lie on your desk through classes like a slug, you crawl down the hallways at a slug’s pace, time oozes past like a gelatinous slug, your teachers’ voices slide through your ears like slugs. You’d say you wish you could die, but now that you’ve actually thought you were going to die, you believe you have stricken the phrase from your repertoire forever. Really, you wish you could be unconscious until you feel better. So you’d really just like to sleep.

The worst part is, you _do_ sleep. Teachers do try to wake you up, and when they do you try to stay awake, but as soon as you’ve answered their question, your head’s back on the desk like your strings have been cut. An entire half a day of school without notes. Doesn’t matter that it’s stuff you’ve likely learned before; you are _fucked_.

By the time lunch rolls around, you feel nauseous with dread and antsy with a full bladder. You drag yourself down the hallway with all the energy of a slug and survive the bathroom without falling asleep on the toilet, then you drag yourself back down the hallway to class, clutching your middle. You can’t tell if your stomach is so upset because you’re exhausted or desperately hungry—either way, you feel like shit, and you don’t have any food anyway.

You almost throw up again when a voice declares “Underclassman GET!” and two arms seize both of yours to haul you in the opposite direction of your class. You sputter nonsense until you realize it’s Yosuke and Chie who’ve got you sandwiched between them, and they’re marching you off in the direction of the roof. “I made you lunch,” says Chie, beaming and holding a bento box. “Yosuke never wakes up in time to make his own, let alone anyone else’s.”

“I’ll have you know I woke up right on time,” Yosuke says over your head. “It’s just a little hard to make food in the middle of Junes.”

“Guys,” you protest weakly.

“We’ve got you,” says Chie.

They sit you down on the roof, where Chie sets the bento down on your lap and opens a cup of instant noodles for herself. You stare at the box; it’s green, with little puppy faces in the corner. “You really didn’t have to,” you say blankly. A girl made you lunch. Why is this more surreal than falling through a TV?

“Oh, um,” says Chie, blushing, “it’s not like that or anything. Just. You need food to recover, you know! Lots of protein, especially.”

“Aw, you didn’t make me lunch too?” Yosuke wheedles.

“You can starve!”

“It was just a DVD! I’m gonna replace it!”

“You’re not the one who came out of a—” She cuts herself off, as if it’s too surreal to say aloud. “…Adachi-kun, are you feeling any better?”

Don’t screw this up, you think. Even if it’s “not like that,” you literally have this girl’s lunch on your lap and she’s concerned for your welfare. You’re actually interesting to her, mostly because you fell out of a TV, but still interesting. You do your best to smile. “Actually, I feel much better today.”

“Well, that wasn’t very convincing,” Yosuke says.

"Tell me about it," says Chie. “D'you think the health center could help?”

You’re _not_ wasting your lunch break that way. “No, it’s fine! Really. Thank you.”

“How’s your leg, then? Yosuke didn’t botch up the bandaging too badly?”

"Hey! I know how to tie a knot!"

"A  _knot_? You  _did_  mess it up!"

“How else are you supposed to tie a bandage?!" Yosuke says. Chie groans. "Fine, fine! I didn't do it right. But I assure you I didn't do it right not as badly as I could have."

“It feels okay, but I have no idea,” you say honestly. “I can look up how to bandage things when I get home, though.”

“Nope, I’ve got this!” says Chie. “I was one of those kids who went around running up trees, sometimes kind of literally, so you bet I know how to wrap up a knee. Here—can I roll up your pant leg?”

“Oh, um, uh—sure,” you say, a little weakly. You just know you’re blushing all the way down to your neck. “Thanks?”

“Meanwhile,” says Yosuke. “What the _hell_ was that, man?”

“Yeah, seriously,” says Chie. “I heard about your arm thing at Junes yesterday, but—Yosuke, what _is_ this? That's not even a knot! What makes you think this is _remotely_ how you tie a bandage?”

You laugh a little, despite yourself, then immediately wish you hadn’t. Chie just grins. “I admitted I botched it, didn’t I?” Yosuke grumbles. “C’mon, Adachi-kun, you owe us an explanation. How about we go from the beginning?”

There isn’t actually much of a beginning, when you think about it. Not a lot happened until the end of the two hours you spent in there. Regardless, you tell them everything (except, of course, anything more than a passing mention of your mother), from the plugging in the TV, to the arrival of your tutor, to the telescope, to the fog, the teeth, the screaming woman and the walkways. It takes less than five minutes, and by then, Chie’s done fixing your knee, and she’s slurping away at her ramen noodles.

“If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I would have said you were crazy,” Chie muses.

“You don’t think I’m crazy?” you ask.

“If you are, then we _all_ gotta be, because I _definitely_ saw you come out of the TV,” says Yosuke. “Just… geez, this bizarre. Except, I guess, that Narukami-sensei's your tutor."

Chie laughs, loud and full-bellied. "Yeah! The world can't be upside down yet if Narukami's still doing every single job and talking to every single person. Oh!" she says, sitting up straight. “Do you think it’s that specific TV? Maybe it’s a freaky Junes thing.”

“ _For the last time_ , we don’t order TVs with alternate dimensions inside them,” Yosuke says. His joke is light, but you can see the strain in his face. “And I know that he stuck his hand through a different TV than the one we delivered. That one was display only; the actual products don’t come out of their original boxes.” He crosses his arms, closing his eyes in thought. “…Go back to the part about the flying teeth?”

You frown. That’s honestly the part that worries you most—the knowledge that the world inside the TV isn’t just empty walkways and fog, but home to living creatures. That world is alive. “Well, it wasn’t human, not even remotely,” you say. Sometimes ruling out the basics is best. “I don’t know _what_ it was. A—a monster, I guess? I know I sound crazy, but I _saw_ it,” you mumble, rubbing the back of your neck.

“But the screaming woman—“ Chie shudders; for a moment she looks honestly perturbed, and she stares down at her noodles. “This is too weird. First the dead reporter, then the TV thing, then the enka singer this morning…”

“Enka singer?” you echo.

“You didn’t hear?” she says, looking surprised. “Everyone’s talking about it. They found the enka singer this morning, hanging from a phone line just like the reporter. You know, the enka singer who’d been the wife of the guy who’d been cheating with the reporter. People won't stop talking about it because there was a ton of fog this morning, and nobody actually saw the body until at least nine in the morning. And I got her autograph for my mother once too, and now…”

You run that by in your head—a woman screaming in a dangerous foreign dimension last night, and this morning a dead woman on a phone line. “Hey,” you say. “You don’t think that’s related?”

Yosuke's head swivels towards you so fast,  _you_ get whiplash. “You don’t think she died because she ended up in that world, do you? That the—the teeth thing got her?”

“I’m not going to joke,” you say. “I felt so sick from just being in there for two hours that I can see that place killing you if you stay there too long. If I hadn’t found the stack of TVs, I wouldn’t be here.”

Yosuke’s not smiling. “They said the enka singer was missing for almost two days.”

“There’s really no solid connection,” Chie-san says.

“Do we really need one?” Yosuke says forcefully. “He’s right. You don’t think the coincidence itself is way too weird?”

“ _Everything_ about this is weird!” Chie cries. “We’re talking about _flying teeth_ inside a TV—“

The roof door opens, and Chie shuts her mouth with an audible clack. A slim, beautiful girl pokes her head through the roof door and—you feel your mouth dry up—her dark eyes are looking right at you. “Um, Chie...?” she says. Even her voice is pretty. “I got those notes from Kondo-kun that you wanted...”

“Oh, um, thanks, Yukiko!” Chie says, trying way too hard to be casual. You wince as Chie hops to her feet. “Yeah, uh—I’ll just take those.”

“And I need to run back to the inn today right after class,” Yukiko says. She glances over Chie-san’s shoulder at you again, curious. “Sorry, I’ll... see you later, I guess. Have fun eating lunch with your friends.”

“Yeah! See you later.”

The roof door closes again. “You gonna tell Yukiko-san?” Yosuke asks.

“How can I?” Chie says, flipping through the papers distractedly. “She might be my best friend, but all that means is that when I start spouting stuff about TVs and monsters, she’ll cart me off to the asylum herself for my own good. Here,” she says, and hands you the notes. “Yosuke said you looked like you weren’t going to survive morning classes, and you’ve only been here for a day so you might not know too many people, so I asked Yukiko to ask an underclassman she knows for his morning notes.”

You can’t stop staring. Chie smiles, shaking the notes at you, and you take them almost reverently. “ _Thank_ you,” you say, and mean it. Who _are_ these people? Do people like this really exist?

“Yeah, no problem!” she says. “I also made that food for you too, so don’t forget to eat it!”

“And maybe don’t forget who saved your ass from passing out on the floor of Junes?” Yosuke pleads as you open the bento and thank Chie for the lunch. You take back any earlier charitable thoughts towards Yosuke; yeah, Yosuke won’t die if he misses one lunch. A girl made you lunch. No way in hell you’re going to miss this.

You pop a piece of meat into your mouth and see your life flash before your eyes.

“How is it?” Chie asks, almost anxiously.

You swallow. You’ve almost been eaten alive by flying teeth, you think. You will survive. “It’s great!” you say, and smile. “I knew you’d be a wonderful cook.”

Chie beams. “Wow, really?”

“Ah, but… I still feel a little ill from the TV,” you say, faking a grimace. “I don’t think I can eat all of this by myself. Yosuke-senpai, would you like to share?”

“You bet!” Yosuke says, and snags a piece with his bare fingers. He chokes in less than a second. “What the hell is this?” he exclaims, mouth still full of food. “Chie, this is disgusting!”

“Don’t give me that,” Chie-san says, going back to her noodles. “Adachi-kun liked it.”

“It’s really delicious,” you say.

“Why, _you_ ,” Yosuke-senpai hisses. You smile harmlessly at him.

But you do take the bento home with you, promising to wash the box for Chie. You don’t know if you’ll survive finishing it, but you’re going to try.

* * *

 

_AFTER SCHOOL_

Classes end, and you have no idea how you’re going to get back into your house without your mother noticing you only have a stack of notes, a bento box that isn’t your own, and no bookbag at all. You’re in the middle of wondering if you can pass off Kondo’s handwriting (whoever Kondo is, anyway) as your own when Chie waves at you from the school gates, accompanied by a rather hungry-looking Yosuke.

“Hey, we’re going down to Junes today,” Yosuke says. “Gonna investigate the TVs and all that, you know? Definitely not going in, though,” he adds. “Wanna come with?”

You stare at Chie, who looks at you expectantly, and Yosuke-senpai, who, for all the shit you’ve put him through these past few days, is still giving you his easy smile. “I can’t,” you say, which is familiar, but the looks of disappointment on their faces aren’t. Has this ever happened to you before? Has anyone ever asked you to hang with them after school, and been actually affected when you said no? “Sorry, it’s… my mother,” you say. “She’ll worry. She might have noticed I was gone last night.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” Chie says. “That’s sweet of you, Adachi-kun.”

“Ah, it’s… um,” you say. You’re blushing again.

“We’ll walk you home, then,” Chie says. “Which way’s your house?”

“The bike offer still stands, if you’re not feeling well,” Yosuke says.

You look at the bike leaning against Yosuke’s leg. The chain rattles loosely on the gears, the handlebars flake with rust, and the duct tape holding the front tire together is peeling. You laugh nervously. “Aha, um…”

“Good decision,” Chie says.

“Hey! He didn’t say no!”

“I meant no,” you say.

“Damn,” Yosuke says. “You look cute and cuddly, man, but you’re _cold_.”

“I think he’s nice,” Chie laughs.

You’re blushing furiously again. God _dammit._ “M-My house is that way,” you stammer, and Yosuke laughs and leads the way.

“So you transferred here just a few days ago, didn’t you? Why’d you move to Inaba?” asks Chie.

“Oh,” you say. You can feel your mood deteriorating, but you try for a smile anyway. “Well, I guess my mother wanted a break from her job. And she wanted me to focus more on school. To get into a good university.”

“Really? This isn’t really the place to do it,” says Yosuke. Chie looks at him, confused, and Yosuke shrugs. “Well, I mean… no offense intended, but Yasogami High isn’t exactly state-of-the-art, you know? It’s not going to impress on a college application, even if you do get top marks. Wouldn’t you have stayed in a city high school if you were going for a big university?”

“Exactly!” you say. “It doesn’t make sense—“ and you stop, and swallow the rest of that sentence. You start again. “Well, she’s my mother. She works hard for both of us.”

“School’s pretty important to you, huh?”

You smile cheerfully. “You know what they say: if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything.”

Yosuke looks up at the sky. “That’s—“

“That’s Yukiko,” says Chie.

You follow her gaze to see a rather harassed Yukiko speaking to a TV reporter on camera. You glance back at Chie; she’s glaring like she could kill the interviewer with sheer force of will. “Um, but that’s just the local news station, right?” You scratch the back of your head. “I heard they did want to interview her about the inn…”

“But she’s already said she doesn’t want to be interviewed! And then she already gave them _two_ interviews!” Chie says. You take an instinctive step back. “Ghh, I cannot _believe_ —they’re just _hounding_ her all week, at the inn, at night, to school and back—“

“Hey, whoa there,” says Yosuke, but Chie pushes him aside, already running down the street.

“I’m gonna kick his mic back in his face!”

“Oh, no,” Yosuke mutters, and takes off after her. “C’mon, Adachi-kun!”

You grip your notes tightly and hurry after him. You can’t let the best seats be taken, can you?

“No, it’s okay,” Yukiko is saying to Chie, then to the reporter: “Please, I can’t give an interview at this time. Please…”

“You couldn’t have waited until she at least got home from school to jump her?” says Chie. “She’s busy working hard! And she already gave you an interview about the reporter, even when she didn’t have to! Why do you want another one?”

“With the death of the enka singer—“

“She already gave you an interview about that, too! And the singer isn’t even remotely related to the inn!”

A pair of students walking by peer curiously down your street. Yukiko is blushing hard, looking like she wants to disappear. “Chie…”

“Come on,” Chie says. “If you really want an interview, you can talk to Yukiko’s mother, right? You _did_ talk to her mother before accosting her daughter on her way home from school, didn’t you?”

The reporter frowns. “That’s…”

“We can come back,” suggests the cameraman. The reporter doesn’t move. “When we’ve got an official story, we can come back,” the cameraman insists.

“We’ll be in touch,” says the reporter. He nods to the cameraman, who wraps up the wires and stuffs them back in their van too fast to not be relieved. Yosuke steps back to allow them room to drive away.

“I’m sorry, Chie,” says Yukiko, and sighs. “I don’t know how they found out about it…”

“About what?”

Yukiko glances first from Yosuke to you, pursing her pretty lips together. “Oh, this is Adachi-kun, a new friend of ours. He’s a first-year,” says Chie.

“If you’re worried about me keeping a secret, you don’t have to. I don’t know anybody to tell anyway,” you say, and laugh a little. Ugh, way to make yourself look like a loser.

Yukiko smiles worriedly, glances down the deserted street, and lowers her voice anyway. “My mother might be stepping down as manager for a little while, leaving me in charge,” says Yukiko. She won’t look any of you in the eye. “I… I can’t say anything else about it. It’s not official yet. I don’t know how they found out, let alone how they moved for an interview so fast…”

“I can’t believe how rude those two were! When you guys hadn’t even announced it yet, too!” says Chie. “I saw them waiting outside Yasogami all today. The nerve of them!”

Yukiko puffs out a small laugh. “Well, anyway…” She gives a small bow to you and Yosuke. “I’m sorry about that commotion. I didn’t mean to pull you into my business.”

“More like Chie pulled us into your business,” Yosuke says. Chie glares at him. “I didn’t say it wasn’t warranted! I agree, the guy was being a jerk.”

“Yeah, it’s just good he’s gone now,” you manage to say. Yukiko is probably the most beautiful girl you’ve ever met in real life and she’s looking _right at you_. You swallow hard. “Um, I’m Tohru Adachi! N-Nice to meet you.”

Yukiko smiles back without teeth. Cute and polite. “Yukiko Amagi, second year. Pleased to meet you, although… I’m sorry it was under these circumstances.”

“C’mon, I’ll walk with you back to the inn,” says Chie. “Adachi-kun, don’t let Yosuke pressure you into riding his bike.”

You laugh a little, internally scrambling for something to say that would make Chie stay. You can’t think of anything. Dammit, dammit. She was going to walk home with _you_.

“It’s okay, really,” says Yukiko. “I’m sure you had plans with Yosuke and Adachi-kun…”

“Nothing that couldn’t suffer a little detour,” says Chie, and smiles brightly. “I gotta look after my friends, you know.”

* * *

 

You make it to your bedroom door before your mother calls, without looking away from the TV: “How was school today?”

 _Well_. You have very detailed notes on material you already know written by a person you’ve never met. You’ve spent the night in the department store you were banned from associating yourself with. A girl made you a lunch that could probably kill a horse to help you recover from almost becoming the lunch of a set of flying teeth. The “slow-witted whiner” from Junes offered you a ride on his bike, and to hang out at Junes, and to clean up your vomit, and yet another ride on his bike, and his sympathy for your move, and maybe to keep talking to you after today. You might like a girl, and not the one who can fit in your pocket—more like _you_ could fit in _hers_.

You imagine telling your mother this, and almost laugh out loud. Yeah, _right_.

“Good,” you say.

“You’re meeting Narukami-san tomorrow after school,” she says, and changes the channel. “Be prepared.”

Scowling to yourself, you shut the bedroom door behind you. You do all of the homework that was due today, then all the homework due tomorrow, then tomorrow’s work. Your mother turns off the TV and you hear her drifting into her own bedroom. You study until you feel woozy (probably more effects from your adventure inside the TV), then sneak a few more pieces of killer meat from Chie’s bento and curl up in your futon with your stuffed bear. Your eyes shut just before midnight.

On the living room television, an image flickers out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somebody call me out on OOCness from the IT and i promise i'll love you
> 
> EDIT: i called myself out on subtle OOCness and edited appropriately but you can do it. i believe in you, reader. you can read this even more critically than me


	4. Yu Narukami

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *watches P4GA ep 7* 
> 
> ..........glasses?????????????

_LUNCH_

“Are you _studying_?” says Chie.

Yosuke leans right over your desk and examines your math work. You resist the urge to headbutt him out of your personal space, if only to keep from breaking your glasses. “Wait, this isn’t what the first years are learning now,” says Yosuke.

“It’s what we will be learning three days from now,” you explain. You dig through your bookbag and pull out the washed bento box. “Thank you for the food,” you say.

“Of course!”

“Go back to the part where you’re three days ahead in math,” Yosuke interrupts. You pull out his washed uniform and hand that to him, too. “Oh, geez, you didn’t have to. It wasn’t the cleanest when I gave it to you anyway.”

“Yosuke, that’s _gross_. Actually, wait,” says Chie. “Are you secretly a genius or something? Oh! Is that why you moved out here to Inaba? Did you graduate at thirteen and now you're part of an undercover job for the CIA?”

“No, nothing like that! I just… like to study,” you say sheepishly. Who doesn't like to do things they're good at?

“Yeesh,” says Yosuke. “Yukiko better watch out; we have a new contender for top of the class. Wait, that’s not right, she’s not in your year…”

“She’s number one right now?” you say in surprise.

“Has been for a while, on top of all the help she’s doing at the inn,” says Chie. “She’s naturally gifted that way.”

“And in a lot of other ways, too,” says Yosuke, grinning, and then cringes at Chie's sharp kick to his shins. “I mean her face!”

“ _An-y-way_ ,” she says. “We checked out the TVs at Junes yesterday.”

You sit up straighter. “You didn’t go in, did you?”

“Couldn’t put a finger through, let alone the rest of us.” Yosuke sighs. “It might just be you, dude.”

You can feel Chie looking at you with interest, and you feel suddenly self-conscious. You don’t have any pencil smudges on your face, do you? “I-I wouldn’t know about that,” you say. “This never happened before I came to Inaba.”

“Seriously, you should try it out again after school,” says Yosuke. “We can hop over to Junes—“

“I have to meet with a tutor today.”

Yosuke looks at you strangely. “Why would you need a tutor? You’re already studying by yourself.”

You shrug and say nothing. You’ve spoken too much about your mother as it is.

“Some other day, then?” says Chie. She sits down in the desk next to you and begins opening another cup of instant noodles, her smile absolutely delighted. “Until then, have you heard about the Midnight Channel, Adachi-kun?”

You frown as Yosuke settles into the desk in front of you and pulls out a paper bag. “Um… no? I—“

“Chie, don’t be telling him weird stuff like that,” Yosuke says. He leans over to you conspiratorially. “I tried it already. It doesn’t work.”

“Wait, I—“

“ _I_ tried it, and I definitely saw someone! You just didn’t do it on a rainy night,” she says hotly. She turns to you. “The Midnight Channel is an urban legend that if you watch a blank TV screen at midnight while it’s raining, you’ll see your soulmate!”

“Cool?” you say, uncomfortably. “But…”

Yosuke rolls his eyes. “Sure, I saw someone too, but that’s just some static, and seeing your own reflection on the screen—“

“Guys?” you say, and they stop. You look down. “Sorry, I—I need to study.”

Chie frowns. “During lunch break?”

You wish you could disappear on the spot. You’ve never had to put your foot down like this.

“You’re already three days ahead,” Yosuke points out.

“It’s usually more than a week,” you mumble. “I’m behind because of the… you know. The TV thing.”

“Wow. You sure you don’t…” Yosuke begins, but trails off. “Well… okay.” He stands, and a second later Chie slings her bag back on her shoulder. He looks at you awkwardly, and you sincerely wish he’d just leave. “…Later.”

They walk out together, and you overhear Yosuke saying, “I’ve got your new ‘Trial of the Dragon,’ by the way; I’ll bring it tomorrow…” You grip your pencil tightly and put your nose to the paper, but your concentration is shot for the rest of the period.

Damn.

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

Your mother isn’t home when you arrive. You toe your shoes off and sling your book bag on the couch, where it hits the remote control. You consider the TV, glance over your shoulder, then delicately press the power button.

Yukiko is on screen, fumbling her way through an interview about taking her mother’s place as manager “only, um, uh, only temporarily.” Geez, there’s really nothing to do in this town except watch TV; you’d think they’d have a better news station considering. You sit on the couch and feel yourself unwind, keeping your finger on the power button. Just for ten minutes or so. Ten minutes won’t hurt.

There’s footsteps outside the door.

You hit the power button, throw the remote on the couch, snatch your bag, and bolt for your room. You shut your bedroom door as the front door opens; you hear your mother sigh as she walks in.

“Tohru?” she calls.

“Yes,” you say.

“Studying hard?”

“Yes,” you say.

“Dinner in an hour.”

“Yes,” you say.

In an hour, your mother sets down a plate of boiled cabbages with mayonnaise, miso on the side. She pops open a can of beer and smiles. “I would have made nimono,” she says, “but we have to use up all those cabbages, don’t we?”

You _hate_ cabbages.

Both you and your mother stare down at your plates.

“Thank you for the meal,” you say blandly.

Your mother picks up a piece with her chopsticks and grimaces. Your mother also hates cabbages.

Well. Whoever advised against drinking poison and waiting for your enemies to die was a pussy.

***

_EVENING_

“Pardon the intrusion,” says Narukami. Again, he’s still in his work clothes, but now he’s carrying a backpack instead of gifts.

“Would you like anything to drink?” you mother says hopefully. “A juice box, Nanako-chan?”

Nanako hides behind Narukami’s leg again, and he smiles. “Perhaps just water,” he says, again. Your mother smiles and disappears into the kitchen, and Narukami’s calm face turns towards you. You resist the irrational urge to sneer. “Would you like to study in your room?”

“Good idea,” you say, and hold the door open.

Narukami, instead, takes the door and gestures for you to go first. The urge to sneer returns. “How are you doing in your science classes? I’ve heard the geography section right around now is hard for first-years,” says Narukami.

“We’re just learning about lakes right now,” you say, dragging a desk to the middle of your bedroom. “That’s not hard at all; it’s only memorization—“

“Teddie!” Nanako exclaims.

 _Shit_ , you’d forgot to hide that. Nanako rushes to the corner of your room where your futon is folded and holds it up for Narukami (please _no_ ) to see. “Look, Big Bro, Adachi-san has a cute teddie bear!”

“That’s not mine!” you say loudly. Nanako drops it in fright. Shit, _shit_. “I—no, that’s not—sorry,” you say, and mean it. You pick the bear up and, though it makes your skin crawl, offer it to her with an embarrassed smile. “I didn’t mean to yell. Here.”

She doesn’t move.

“Didn’t you buy a ribbon today that would look nice on him?” Narukami asks gently.

Nanako lights up again like he’d flipped a switch. “Oh! Yes!” she says, and sets the bear down on your table and begins tying a purple ribbon on your bear’s ear. It’s disgustingly pink. “There,” she says, obviously delighted with her work. “Now Teddie is pretty!”

You stare at the ratty old thing, now with a girlish lopsided bow on the side of its frazzled head. You’ve never felt a stronger urge to throw that bear in the trash.

“Tohru,” says your mother’s voice, and you suppress a wince. Your mother looks at you severely from the doorway, and sets a tray of two water glasses on the table. “You shouldn’t distract Narukami-san. He’s taking the time to teach you.”

Nanako shifts to hide the bear a little better. “Not a distraction, Adachi-san,” Narukami says. “We were just getting started.”

Your mother smiles. “Study hard,” she tells you, and shuts the door again.

Nanako slides the bear out from behind her back, looking guilty. Narukami pats her head, seemingly on reflex. “Are you particularly good at memorization?” asks Narukami.

“What?” Oh, the lakes. You don’t know why he’s harping on it; straightforward memorization is the one thing you _are_ naturally gifted at. “Memorization isn’t a problem. I’ll get around to it, I guess.”

“You haven’t done it yet?”

“I’ll do it eventually. Memorization isn’t that big of a deal.” You shrug, but it’s hard with Nanako’s fingers still on your bear. “I just don’t really like lakes, is all.”

Narukami seems amused, but hell if you can tell; the guy never moves his face. “A personal vendetta against lakes?”

“They’re kind of gross,” you explain. You dump your textbooks out of your bookbag, but Narukami doesn’t move to do the same with his own backpack. “Like… when you think about it, it’s just a bunch of water sitting still, not doing anything. Just fermenting in itself. You end up with all sorts of gross stuff growing in it, and it’s not like it can wash itself clean, because there’s no new water going in and no old water moving out.”

“A lot of people think they’re pretty,” Narukami says mildly.

“On the surface,” you say. “It’s underneath where you’ve got all the bacteria and algae and dead fish floating around, and it never goes away. Just piles up and up underneath the surface.” You frown. “Are these lakes even that important? It’s only one quiz for science.”

“Hm,” says Narukami.

There’s a silence. Quietly, Nanako removes the ribbon from the bear’s ear and slides it across the empty desk. You stare at it. She stares at you. You stare at her. She puffs out her cheeks, looking embarrassed.

“I’m sorry for touching your bear. You can have Teddie back.”

“I-It’s… fine,” you say. You reach across the desk (it feels like it got longer) to snatch it from the no-man’s-land, and shove the bear in a desk drawer. Irrationally, you wish you had a lock to put on it.

“Won’t Teddie be lonely in there?” she says curiously.

You suppress a grimace. You’d roll your eyes, but you used to say the same thing about the same bear when you were her age. “Well, he’s… he’s used to it,” you say.

Nanako frowns. “That doesn’t seem like a very nice thing to get used to.”

Ugh, now she was making _you_ feel bad about this. You should have thrown that bear away years ago. You look at Narukami for a lifeline, but he doesn’t seem very interested in his lakes anymore. “Um, shouldn’t we start working?” you say. “I’m sure you have some homework to do, right, Nanako?”

“No, I finished all my work this afternoon,” she says. “I just like to hang out with Big Bro.”

“Dojima-san works late at the station, especially with the recent murders,” Narukami explains. “I get off a little earlier than he does, though, because I’m not officially a detective. So I watch Nanako for him at night.”

“Should I leave?” Nanako asks anxiously. “I can go back to the house…”

“No, no, I never said that!” you say. Oh god, you’re not going to be responsible for making little girls cry. “I mean… if you go back, you’ll be alone at the house, won’t you?”

Nanako shrugs, staring at her knees. Narukami’s hand tenses on the table.

You open your mouth—

“Hey, does that window have a screen?”

Bewildered, you turn to see Narukami looking straight at you. It’s the clearest, most straightforward gaze you’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. “Wha—yeah, of course. Otherwise bugs would get in, wouldn’t they?”

Narukami stands (with another pat on Nanako’s head) and examines your bedroom window. “It comes out, though,” he says.

“Probably? What are you—hey!”

“Whoops,” says Narukami, looking down at the screen he’d just pulled out. “Nanako, wanna go for a field trip?”

“A _what_?” you say.

“It seems appropriate to learn about bodies of water by the Samegawa.”

“Oh! That’s a good idea!” says Nanako brightly.

“Are you guys trying to sneak out of my house,” you say, “through my _window_?”

“Yeah,” says Narukami.

“But—but w-we’re on the second floor,” you say. You glance at the door, but it doesn’t seem like your mother has heard. “There i-isn’t a tree or anything to climb down on, or a—“

Narukami unzips his backpack and pulls out a coiled rope.

“ _What is that_.”

 “Big Bro is always prepared!” says Nanako.

“Just coincidence,” says Narukami.

“What are you— _what are you doing_ ,” you say frantically. Your mother is literally right on the other side of this door and she could walk in at any moment and see your tutor trying to climb down from your window like a wannabe ninja. “I—we don’t have to go anywhere! We can sit here and—and learn about it from a book like normal people!”

“Hey, do you have anything to tie this rope to?”

 “Um—no,” you say, and it’s actually true. “Yeah, so this is a bad idea! How about we not do it?”

“Your desk has to be at least a hundred pounds. How heavy are you?”

You stomach sinks. “Er… a hundred thirty?”

Narukami piles your textbooks, his backpack, and Nanako’s backpack onto your desk. “With all this, plus Mr Teddie, I’m guessing at least a hundred sixty. Is that an appropriate counterweight? Do physics work that way?”

“ _You’re_ the tutor!”

“I’m a psych major. I never took physics.”

“There is also a _door_ ,” you say desperately. “That we can _walk out through._ ”

Narukami and Nanako look at you. “I guess so,” says Nanako, slowly.

“Are you sure?” asks Narukami.

You suppress a deep breath. What does he mean, _are you sure there’s a door_? “If it’s a field trip then—sure. Yeah. Let’s go.”

“So we don’t have to break the law and climb out the window?” asks Nanako.

“There’s no law I know of against climbing out windows,” says Narukami. “It’s just generally not done.”

“That’s good! So I don’t have to keep it a secret from Daddy?”

“You should keep it a secret from Dojima-san anyway.”

“ _Mom_ ,” you say loudly, opening the bedroom door. “We’re going out!”

She turns around sharply from the couch. The TV goes mute. “Where? Why?”

You glance back; Narukami is sliding the screen back into your window. “Field trip,” you say nervously. “We’re learning about, uh, rivers. In geography. So we’re going to sample the Samegawa.”

Her eyes narrow. “You don’t need to do that.”

“No,” says Narukami from behind you. His backpack is magically packed and ready to go. “But I find it helps with a student’s long term memory to connect the lesson with an experience. It’s a good way to start off after a school transfer.” He looks, suddenly, worried and apologetic; a good young man deferring to his elders. It’s the most expression you’ve seen on his face ever. “It’s worked well for a lot of other transfer students, but if you don’t want Tohru-kun going out after the sun’s down…”

“Oh, well,” she says. “That sounds like a… wonderful teaching method.”

“I like to go above and beyond when I can,” says Narukami.

Your mother smiles. Her eyes are fixed on you. “Don’t forget your cell phone. Be home within an hour. Study hard. Have you packed your bags?”

“It’s better if he doesn’t take notes for this,” says Narukami, leading the way out of the house. “That way he’ll _have_ to remember what I said.”

You feel your mother’s eyes on you as you shut the door behind you.

“I didn’t bring any food,” says Nanako sadly, holding up a hand to feel the light drizzle as Narukami opens two umbrellas. “And I had a bag I’d prepared in the freezer…”

“Next time,” says Narukami. He sets off at a pace just slow enough for Nanako and simultaneously drive you crazy. “Yosuke-kun still has some at his place, doesn’t he? We could ask him to bring that tomorrow.”

"Yosuke-kun?" you echo.

"Oh, do you know him?" asks Narukami, rather unnecessarily. "I suppose city kids would stick together. I help him with some assignments, but more often towards midterms and finals when he's panicking and regretting procrastinating and wondering why he can't find any of his old assignments in his nonexistent binder."

Nanako frowns. “But will he remember if you ask him to bring it?”

“I have faith he’ll pull through for the things that count.”

“Cat food isn’t that important, Big Bro.”

Narukami pantomimes a wound to the heart, Nanako giggles, and you decide you’re going to make your mother fire this smug bastard. You’re going to do it the instant you get back home. He’s going to waste your whole night, and it’ll be another night without having studied. You can’t turn down Chie and Yosuke’s offer of eating lunch together and have nothing to show for it--

“Nanako, what are the three largest lakes in Japan?” asks Narukami. You look at him sharply, and very seriously consider the possibilities of mind-readers.

She frowns. “Um… Biwa… Kasumigaura? …Ehh…”

“Adachi-kun?”

“Saroma,” you say.

“Which regions?”

“Kansai, Kanto, Hokkaido.”

“Any other lakes, Nanako?”

“Toya?”

“Region, Adachi-kun?”

“…Hokkaido?”

“One of my cousins went to Hokkaido for the birth of her niece,” says Narukami with a sigh. “She never fails to remind us how much she wanted to see the lake there.”

“I’d like to meet Kusawa-san someday,” says Nanako.

“Ever been to Hokkaido, Adachi-kun?”

You shake your head. Your father might have, though you wouldn’t really know.

“Take a guess, then. Do you think Toya’s a particularly big lake, or is Nanako just remembering random information again?” asks Narukami.

You frown, looking up at the sky for an answer. It’s so much clearer than the sky in the city, you realize.

“No, Big Bro, it’s pretty big!” Nanako insists.

You shake those thoughts from your mind. “It’s in the top ten, I know.”

“Number nine,” says Narukami. “Nanako, did you know Fujioka-san from Yasogami was from San’in? You wouldn't happen to know him, Adachi-kun? How about lakes from San’in?”

By the time you’ve gotten to the Samegawa, you’ve gone through the twenty largest lakes in Japan and their regions. “That was fun!” says Nanako.

“I hope so,” says Narukami. “How about you, Adachi-kun?”

“It’s better for studying to be efficient than fun,” you say resolutely.

“Doesn’t have to be one or the other,” he says. “Oftentimes—“

“Big Bro! Do you have my ribbon?” Nanako asks, almost urgently.

Narukami pats his pockets and pulls out the pink ribbon she’d tied to your bear. She smiles with her whole face in the dim street light. Carefully, she takes the ribbon and advances towards a darkened tree, her small feet almost silent on the pavement; but as soon as her feet touch grass, the cat hiding in the shadows bolts away down the road. “ _Geez_ ,” she says, like the cat has been terribly rude, and Narukami chuckles. “Don’t laugh,” she complains. “I wanted to put a little poom-poom on top of her head.”

“Like those really ugly shih tzu dogs?”

“Big Broooo,” says Nanako.

Narukami laughs. “She’s probably still on this road somewhere,” he offers. “If you’re calm enough, you might be able to find her.”

Nanako totters down the road, further into shadow; Narukami’s eyes never leave her. You swear you’ll make your mother fire him and you’ll never have to put up with this asshole again—the nerve of him, bringing his little sister with him and barely looking at you. Horrendous, _horrible_ work ethic, _terrible_ example set for the next generation. Gosh, you should feel fantastic right now, finding out that no matter how good he might be at smiling politely and working two jobs, he was just as lazy and unmotivated as everyone els—

You freeze.

“Nanako,” you call in stage-whisper, unsure if you should raise your voice or lower it. “I found the cat!”

“Good eye,” says Narukami.

The cat is a fluffy orange mess of dirt, leaves, and soft fur, with bony legs and a low belly from recent pregnancy. Her tongue is quick and pink as it flickers out between her teeth; you can see your reflection in her eyes as they turn to slits. “Oh! Oh, quick!” whispers Nanako excitedly. “See if you can catch her!”

For just a moment, you hesitate. Cats are fickle, proud, solitary creatures, and you’ve never liked how they don’t like you. Always acting like they’re too good for you, or you’re not good enough for them. Darting away whenever you reached out, demanding your attention when it suited them, indecipherable in their wants and needs. They were, in your opinion, the worst idea for a household pet—high maintenance, impossible to understand, and utterly selfish.

The cat darts into the bushes.

“Aw, Adachi-san,” says Nanako. “You didn’t even try.”

“Why would I, if I knew the cat wouldn’t come?” you say. She doesn’t look any less disappointed, though, and you wince. “Er, maybe if we had some food? Stray cats always like to be fed.”

“If Yosuke-kun remembers,” says Narukami, amused, and clicks his tongue. The cat immediately pokes her head back out of the bush, and Narukami holds out his umbrella as if in offering. You stare, jaw slack, as the cat trots towards Narukami’s extended hand and sniffs it. “I really don’t know if there’s enough fur without knots to put any bow-tie in,” he says, absently tucking the cat’s tail in under the umbrella’s cover.

“How did you _do_ that?” you ask.

Narukami tilts his head. “I guess,” he says, “she wants a familiar place to feel safe.”

***

_EARLY MORNING_

You drag your toothbrush against your teeth. Biwa, in Kansai. Kasumigaura, in Kanto. Saroma, in Hokkaido. Inawashiro, in Tohoku. Nakaumi, in San’in. Hussharo, in Hokkaido…

You forget to tell your mother to fire Narukami.

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

"I'm really sorry about this, Adachi-kun," says Narukami. His voice is muffled and rushed over the phone, and you think you can hear somebody shouting his name in the background. "Things got really hectic today at work, and I don't think I can make your tutoring session today. Unless you don't mind pushing it back until--" The voice gets louder in the background, and Narukami covers the receiver to reply. "--until some ungodly early morning hour, which I assume you do," he continues.

"That's... fine," you say. It is certainly not fine; your math teacher just went over a concept you've never seen before and you're not intending to get anything less than a perfect on tonight's math assignment. "Tomorrow, then?"

Narukami hesitates. "You've seen the news about the murder of Mayumi Yamano and Misuzu Hiiragi, haven't you?" he says slowly.

"I think everyone has in this town," you say. "They don't show anything else except news reports about the Amagi Inn's new manager."

"Until this whole affair is resolved, I'm likely to be working overtime most of the week," says Narukami, "I hope you understand; Inaba is not usually this... excited, and I'm not usually this busy."

"But I thought the news said that the police had a suspect," you say, confused.

"Figuring out 'whodunnit' is sometimes the easy part. Especially with new incidents popping up," he sighs. "I'll get back to you on tomorrow. If there's a problem you really can't figure out, send it to me through email and I'll see what I can do."

Placated, you tell him thanks and leave him to the mercy of whoever had been yelling down his ear. To be honest, you can't imagine how mind-numbingly dull Inaba would be without these murders. You wouldn't have minded seeing the corpse hung upside down, at least to have the memory to mull over when you're bored. You've heard there weren't even any wounds. Besides, ever since you threw up over dissecting a frog in biology last year, you've gotten way better at keeping it down. Right?

You take a new route home to avoid Yosuke, who's standing by his bike looking thoroughly confused at nothing. You wonder, briefly, where Chie is. Aren't she and Yosuke always seen together? Chie had lent him a DVD and everything. Shit, maybe they're… an item? Wouldn't you have heard about something like that if they were, though? And they don't act like they're dating at all; they act like unruly siblings, if anything. And even more than Yosuke, doesn't Chie hang out with--

"Adachi-kun!"

You almost drop your bag, and when you turn to see Yukiko in a pink kimono waving at you from the side of the Samegawa, you almost drop your bag again. Geez, Yukko is _cute_. What's she doing, trying to talk to you?

"I'm sorry to bother you," she says, worrying her lower lip and scraping off lipstick. "I--sorry. But you...  _are_ the underclassman Chie was eating lunch with, right?"

"Er--yes," you say.

"Have you seen Chie today?" she says quickly.

"N-No, I haven't..."

The knuckles on Yukiko's clasped hands grow whiter. "Do you have any idea where she might be?"

"No, I--why?"

Yukiko turns in a circle, like she wants to pace but can't in her kimono and wooden shoes. "Do you--no, that's silly," she mumbles. "Sorry to bother you. I know I must seem crazy, coming out here in my work clothes..."

"No, the--the clothes are okay. They look good on you," you say. You congratulate yourself on getting through that sentence without stuttering. "And I promise I won't laugh at whatever it is! I've seen some pretty weird things myself lately," you say, and clear your throat to hide your laugh.

Yukiko considers you--you would say "carefully," but you feel in your gut that the word is closer to "fearfully." You resist the urge to hide, but she looks away first, and asks, "Have you heard of the Midnight Channel?"

Okay, that _is_ pretty silly, but you stick to your word and don't laugh. "Uh, Chie told me about it..."

"I was up late cleaning a suite of ours and... well, I was in a room alone with a TV turned off on a rainy night, and..." She swallows hard. "...I... saw Chie on the Midnight Channel."

"You saw _Chie_?" you repeat, astounded. "Wait--Chie's your _soulmate_?!"

"It wasn't like Chie described!" says Yukiko. "She said it was a faint, blurry image in static--but this was like looking at a kung-fu movie, starring Chie. And I would know if Chie had ever been in a kung-fu movie. And she talked _to me_ ," she says, even more urgently. "She said she was going to find somebody new to save."

"...What does that have to do with you?" you ask.

Yukiko blushes and waves her hands. "A-Anyway, I was looking for her all today, and I called her phone and her home phone and I even _went_ to her house on my break, and Yosuke-kun hasn't seen her and neither has Kou-kun, her teachers marked her absent, and--it's impossible to just _disappear_ in a small town like Inaba," she says. "Someone will have seen you and told someone who told someone."

"Is she out of town?"

"She would have told me something like that!" insists Yukiko. You realize with panic that Yukiko's eyes are shining just a little too brightly. "I-I mean... she's my best friend! She would!"

"P-Please calm down, Senpai," you stammer. Shit, what do you _do_? "Um... would you like to sit down? I don't have any water, but we could buy some at the shopping district?"

She shakes her head. "Thank you, but I'm--I'll be fine," she sighs. "I'm so sorry, Adachi-kun. I didn't mean to throw all this at you."

"It's okay," you say on reflex. "I mean--have you told the police?"

She nods. "I'm lucky the person who picked up the call believed me even though she hasn't been missing for long."

Then it clicks: Chie is missing, not even a week after the murder of another woman in Inaba. Narukami cancelling last-minute and the police working overtime—possibly on a search for Chie. Yukiko saw her on TV on a mysterious Midnight Channel--or did she see her _in_ the TV?

"Adachi-kun?" Yukiko says. "Adachi-kun, your expression..."

You shake your head. "Sorry, what?"

She stares at you for a long second. "...Did you remember something? Where Chie is?"

"Nope!" you say quickly. "Nope, nothing! I'll, uh, let you know if I see her. Do you need help going back to the inn?"

"No, I'm fine," she says. "Are you in a rush to go somewhere? I haven't held you up, have I?"

"I'm not going anywhere important," you say, and smile nervously. "Just... thought I'd drop by to see Yosuke-senpai. At Junes."

***

You have one hand in the Junes TV when somebody screams, you startle and lose your grip on the TV edge, and somebody slams into you from behind and you _both_ tumble through.

You hit the ground hard, narrowly missing the stack of TVs in the middle of the target, and blink away the stars you see through your skewed glasses. Geez, you landed right on your bookbag. Nothing better be broken in there; you like all those pencils--

"Adachi-kun?"

You freeze.

"...Yukiko-senpai?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any resemblance of quality will return, uh--hmmmmm. Probably the next chapter after the next? My bad.


	5. Yukiko Amagi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't kid yourself, Senpai.

_AFTER SCHOOL_

"Yosuke-kun doesn't work today," Yukiko explains. "So when you said you were going to visit Yosuke-kun, even though you’re his friend and you should know that, it was just so suspicious, I had to follow you to Junes..."

"Please go back, Senpai," you say through gritted teeth. And you’ve only met Yosuke like, twice.

"I certainly can't now! This is where Chie is, isn't it? Wherever…" She carefully holds your gaze like she’d rather look at you than the fog. “…Wherever this is…”

You take a deep breath. "Yes, but it's also very dangerous here. Please go back."

She wavers. Then: "So Chie is in danger here, isn’t she? And all the more reason to stay with you, isn't it? This way, we can protect each other until we find Chie. It's the most logical solution, since we both want to rescue Chie."  

You take another deep breath. Yukiko looks at you oddly. "You said yourself that it's not safe to be here alone," she says, even more clearly. You wish she didn't look so much like she was waiting for you to concede the point, as if she has nothing to concede herself.

"It's only a hunch that she's here," you say instead. "I came to check, but... with all this fog, and all these walkways to choose from, I don't have a lot of ways to find her. Looks like a dead end. We should head back." You shrug in the best physical representation of "oh well" as you know how. Maybe you’ll come back later, when Yukiko isn’t around.

Instead of agreeing, Yukiko squints unattractively. You wish she wouldn’t do that. "Then what's that?" she says, pointing somewhere over your shoulder. You can see a yellowish glint somewhere in the fog; you stand and advance to see a goopy black substance in the vague shape of a footprint, glowing yellow tinge sliding through the shadowy liquid.  

You suppress a shudder. “That wasn’t here before,” you mumble.

“What do you think made it?”

You shrug, before you remember the teeth. Wait, the flying teeth didn’t have feet, so that probably means there’s other _types_ of monsters—

“Do you think Chie is that way?” Yukiko says.

“It’s the only lead we’ve got, but—”

"Then we should hurry," says Yukiko. Her dark eyes are narrowed with determination, and she kicks off her wooden shoes to stand, somehow, taller without them. "Come on, Adachi-kun!"

"Wait! There's--"

"Please tell me on the way!”

It turns out that Yukiko's legs are longer than yours and she has a natural talent for speed-walking, and you find yourself outpaced by a girl with an obi crushing her ribs and both hands hitching up her kimono. Jesus, what is this girl _not_ good at? "There's more footprints up ahead!" she calls back.

"Senpai!" you say. " _Please_ hold up! There's—I told you, it’s dangerous here, you’ll start feeling sick after a while and there’s weird creatures—and it’s very likely whoever threw Chie in is here with her—" Yukiko stops, and you grunt as you smack right into her back. "Ugh… Senpai?"

She whirls around, but though her eyes are wide her expression is as blank as snow. “Creatures? Someone threw Chie in?”

If she’d just _listened the first time_ \-- “Senpai, you _have_ to listen to me,” you say, trying not to sound like you’re speaking to a dim-witted animal, because you're not, you know that, you just have to resist the urge. “I have no idea what this place is, but the first time I came in here, I felt like I was going to throw up afterwards and I saw honest-to-god monsters in here. Jaws large enough to fit my whole body,” you say. Her expression doesn’t change. “I talked with Yosuke-senpai and Chie-senpai about it—that’s how I know them, because they saw me come out of a TV by accident—I went into the TV by accident too, I promise—and they think that this place is dangerous enough that if you push someone in, you could kill someone by trapping them here. We think this is how the news reporter and enka singer died.”

“And now Chie is here,” says Yukiko flatly.

“It’s really dangerous here and I didn’t mean to go rushing off to save Chie,” you say. Well, you sort of did, it’d be fantastic if you could save the day like a full-on action hero, but you’ve got math to do tonight and you don’t want to die, either. “I just wanted to confirm a hunch.”

She folds her hands tightly. “I see,” she says, slowly. “I apologize. I should have listened to what you had to say instead of rushing off without all the information. It’s much too dangerous here…”

You sigh in relief.

“…to go in without weapons.”

Okay, things are getting a _little_ too real.

“L-Let’s not get ahead of ourselves!” you exclaim. “I mean, where w-would we even _get_ weapons? And we can’t fight against the headache this place gives you—“

Yukiko towers over you. The whites of her eyes glow in the dull fog. “If you don’t want to rescue Chie,” Yukiko declares, “you can leave.”

You swallow. You mean to say that maybe you'll do just that, but your throat only clicks dryly. Yukiko doesn't blink at all. “W-Well, you can’t get back in if I don’t help you,” you plead. “Yosuke-senpai and Chie-senpai tried, and I’m the only one who can get through the TVs.”

“Then I won’t leave,” she says.

“But then you won’t have any weapo—“

“I don’t think you understand,” she says, and now her pink lips are a jagged line through her face and her large eyes glitter like broken glass. “I don’t know how you know Chie, or why you want to help her, but Chie is my _friend_ , and even if I didn’t have a responsibility to her as her friend and basic member of society, I _need_ her. I’m sorry, Adachi-kun, but I will find her with or without your help.”

“I-I,” you stammer. “Um, you… Chie-senpai…”

She holds out her hand. “So are you with me, Adachi-kun?”

“What?” you say, faintly.

“Will you take responsibility for your friends? For the decisions you make?” says Yukiko. “Will you see this matter through to the end with me?”

Her delicate fingers tremble in the space between you. Hesitantly, but without any thought at all, you take her fine-boned hand in yours.

“Promise me,” she says.

“I promise,” you reply.

She sighs in relief, and her smooth skin slides out of your grasp. She looks out into the fog, hands still shaking. You think that maybe the tremble in her delicate hands should be cute, but you can't forget the strong set of her mouth; nothing has seemed like such a massive lie, but you can't decide which one it is.

* * *

 

“We are going _today_ ,” says Yukiko. She strides with purpose down the shopping district, then stops and chews on her bottom lip again. “I-I mean, if that’s okay with you. If you don’t have anything else to do today. I just assumed you didn’t because you went in the TV first…”

“My tutor cancelled. I’ll… tell my mother I’m at the library for a project,” you mumble. Vaguely, the thought arises that you may legitimately _die_ within the afternoon. No, the TV world is mostly empty. You probably won’t see anything for hours. It’ll be a nice, peaceful walk free from school, homework, and people.  It'll be okay. It'll be okay.

“Um, let me make this call.” Yukiko reaches for her phone under her— _time to look somewhere else_. “I’ll ask Kasai-san to take over the inn’s management for this afternoon…”

“And do you just. Um,” you say. “Happen to have weapons lying around in your inn, too?”

“Yes, lots.”

You sputter.

“Actually, I suppose they’re blunted for decoration…” Yukiko frowns. “But this one time a really drunk customer took one down from the wall and started swinging it around and the cuts afterwards looked pretty real—oh, sorry, I guess I shouldn’t be saying these things…”

You sputter some more.

“Are you okay, Adachi-kun?” says Yukiko, peering at your face worriedly. “Do you have a cold? You seem to be having problems with your throat…”

“I’m fine!” you manage. “I’m super fine!”

“…If you say so.”

Thankfully, you don’t see anyone walking down the deserted shopping district with the most popular girl in school wearing a pink kimono—except one elderly lady, who Yukiko waved to and introduced as Tatsumi-san. “She and her son supply a lot of our cloths, so she’s seen me dressed this way before,” she says, which does nothing to address the concern of _you_ being seen with her. “I think her son is in your grade, too? I haven’t spoken with him in a while…”

“What’s his name?” you ask, to be polite.

“Kanji Tatsumi. Though, I don’t even know if he attends school anymore… he might have skipped too often…”

You stop asking questions. That’s nobody you want to associate with.

The Amagi Inn is, on the other hand, a respectable establishment. Old enough to be more traditional than outdated, clean and spacious, and filled with people who don’t ask questions. “Oh, probably the storage room in the back,” says a maid, which takes you and Yukiko to a room full of _weapons_.

She ends up handing you a pair of kama. “Or would you prefer a katana?” she asks. “Those are kind of heavy, though, and they can be kind of a responsibility to keep…”

“Ah, I’ll pass,” you say. Responsibility? Getting right up close to a monster with claws and blood? No thanks. “How about anything you can throw?”

“I don’t want to lose any of our shuriken,” she says firmly. “You seem like you’d fight well with kunai, but all our kunai are on display, so…” She holds up a pair of kama. “Like I said before, how about these?”

Farming equipment. Of course a little hick town inn would have those. “Senpai, do you have anything that… I dunno, shoots stuff?”

“Like a rifle?” She looks you up and down, then meets your eyes again. “…Um, no. And decorative rifles are unwieldy, and regular guns needs licenses, and… please take the kama, Adachi-kun.”

You take them, feeling a little smaller in Yukiko’s eyes.  

“And I’ll take a fan. My mother used to teach me how to use these—mostly for show, but now…” She takes a deep breath. “Let me get changed. I can barely move in this.”

Which is how you ended up outside her room, avoiding the eyes of passing maids, trying to look like you aren’t holding weapons. “I really think I should wait in the lobby, Senpai,” you say hesitantly.

“I’ll be just a second!” she says. Does she think you’ll run away if she doesn’t keep you on the shortest leash possible? You really just wanted to watch the TV. The lobby has a really nice flatscreen there; you wonder if it goes to the same place in the TV world, but from your experience with your TV and Junes' TV, you're going to bet it doesn't.

“Yukiko-senpai, if you don’t mind me asking,” you say, “why do you want to rescue Chie-senpai so badly?”

It takes you about a second and a half to realize what you’ve said. You just made yourself look like an asshole by questioning these sorts of wholesome, justice-for-all pursuits—which is really not what you meant, although you sort of did, because you like Chie a lot, but you don’t know if you want to _die_ for her. “I-I mean, we could try to talk to the police about this,” you say quickly. “Somebody will believe us if we show them proof, right?”  

“But if I’m right, it would take at least a week for them to even start,” Yukiko says through the door. You can hear fabric rustling inside. “There’d be way too much disbelief and shock and confusion to mobilize a large number of people like that, and Chie might not even have until tomorrow. We have to rescue her now.”

“O-Oh… I guess that’s true.” But that’s not what you meant, either.

Yukiko steps out of the inn’s changing room, back in her red school uniform. “I know this uniform isn’t really common,” she says, “but Chie says red looks good on me. I sort of ended up with a lot of red clothes, and even dishes and stuffed animals… It’s sort of become my favorite color.”

“Chie-senpai’s right. It looks really good,” you say, and try for an awkward smile.

She smiles back too, and looks back at the mirror with a blush. “I can’t remember if I had a favorite color before red,” she says softly.

* * *

 

When you get back to the TV world, you realize you’ve left your bookbag lying on the floor. “I can’t believe I forgot this,” you mumble, checking to see if all your papers are still there (which they are, thank god).  

“We can come back for it when we’ve found Chie,” Yukiko says. “If you just leave it by these TVs, then it’ll be okay, right?”

Your fingers tighten on the handle. The time you’re giving up to play hero with farming equipment won’t be here when you get back, though. You have math to do, and you were going to email Narukami about any questions you had… and you actually _do_ have a project to do, and you really should have been doing that in the library like you told your mother. It’s not enough to be second-best, let alone not even in the top ten. If you don’t get perfect grades, what then? It’s not like you’re good at anything el—

“Ah, I have this quiz on lakes tomorrow,” you say truthfully. “I went over them with my tutor, but I’m still worried.”

“If you studied them with your tutor, shouldn’t you be alright?”

“I usually study a lot more than that.”

“Oh.” Yukiko looks confused. “I guess so… Who’s your tutor?”

You scratch the back of your neck. “Narukami-sensei. Do you know him?”

“I think everyone knows him. He tutors Yosuke sometimes, and Chie too.” She shrugs. “I haven't really talked to him... A couple of hours of studying is good enough for me.”

_A couple of hours_ , you think derisively, and she's the top of her class. There’s nothing that life hasn’t handed to this girl on a silver platter—looks, fame, wealth, a paying job after high school, and even brains.

“Adachi-kun?” asks Yukiko. “…Are you alright?”

“What? O-Oh, I’m fine!” you say, with a nervous laugh. “Nothing, just thinking about something. Let’s go. Quicker we start, the quicker we finish, right?”

Yukiko grips her fans tight. “The quicker we find Chie.”

There’s a perfect trail of black and yellow smudges all the way down various walkways, and you and Yukiko follow the path in silence. You imagine slime, slowly losing its essence with every step—or a snake, shedding parts of its own skin to keep moving forward. Oh god, what happens when you _find_ the monster? You’d have to fight it, right? Would you have to fight it _for_ Chie? (You’d think that Chie would have fought it herself by then.)

But if a monster took Chie, then how’d she get here in the first place? And if Yosuke and Chie couldn’t get in the TV by themselves, then somebody who _could_ must have put her through… right? Somebody from your world? Somebody like you?

“I think that’s it,” says Yukiko suddenly, pointing at a tall shadow. “I can’t really see because of the fog, but…”

Yukiko breaks out in to a jog; you lug your farm tools after her as fast as you can, which isn’t very. The smudges lead you to a set of wooden doors; you look around, but you can’t see far enough through the fog to see what kind of building this is. “Do you think this is where Chie is?” Yukiko asks. “Or do you think she was only taken through here?”

You grimace; you’re already feeling nauseous, and you haven’t even had to deal with defending yourself. “Uhh, let’s hope this is the end of the yellow brick road,” you say. “It’d be kind of anticlimactic if she wasn’t, huh?”

“Anticlimactic…” repeats Yukiko. “Yes, I suppose so. Are you ready?”  

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” you laugh nervously. She doesn’t laugh with you, and pulls open the doors.

And Chie is on the other side.

“Senpai!” you call, relieved. Wow, you didn’t even have to fight anything! Now you guys can all go back to real life, nobody dies, you can talk with Chie again during lunch, maybe, if you aren’t studying—

Chie turns around, grinning widely. She’s wearing what looks like martial arts training uniform, for some reason; and there’s something strange about her eyes, you think in the back of your head, but you can’t see well enough through the fog to place it. And then:

“ _ANOTHER CHALLENGER! ARE YOU HERE TO STEAL THE PRINCESS_?!” she shouts.  

Yukiko covers her ears. Distantly, you hear your own kama hit the floor.

“ _You’ll never take the princess while I’m here! Because_ — “ Chie kicks a punching bag _off its chain_ into the wall, runs _up_ the wall, flips, lands on a conveniently-placed horizontal bar, flips off _that_ , does a scissor kick in midair and strikes a pose. “ _You’ll never get past me!_ ”

“Wh—“ you say.

“ _I’ve trained my whole life to serve the princess! I can’t fail here!_ ”

“You—“

“ _What’s that?_ ” she shouts. “ _My princess is requesting me! I vow to take you down another day! Upon my honor!_ ”

And Chie turns on her heel ( _cracking_ the wooden floor) and runs, dodging swinging punching bags and cheesy ceremonial banners, then kicks the wooden door _off its hinges_ and disappears into the fog.

“Wait— _what_ —”

“Adachi-kun! Look!” says Yukiko, uncovering her ears. Through the crack Chie had left in the floor, black goop seeped through, pulling free and taking shape. Your spine turns cold; your palms begin to sweat. Slowly, you can see a sphere, a face, bright colors and lips…  _Everything happens so much so fast_ , you think vaguely. You've entered a madhouse.

“Is that a mon—“

“Run!” you yell, and sprint after Chie.

“Adachi-kun! If there’s more monsters here we should learn how to—“

“No!”

“Adachi-kun!” she says again, sounding frustrated.

“I'm not getting eaten!”

You run through the next room, smack into a swinging screen that looks straight out of a martial arts movie, accidentally knock over a bucket of umbrellas (what’s that doing here?), and take a left into another room filled with _swinging blades_. You skip to a stop and swear under your breath until you realize Yukiko is right behind you, shutting the door safely.

“Adachi-kun, please don’t run off like that!” she pants. “It’s not safe to be here alone!”

“It’s not safe to be here at all!” you exclaim. Your hands are shaking even with them clenched hard into fists; you’ve never felt so out of control. “What _is_ this place? Why was Chie yelling like that?”

“Maybe this place affected her because she was here for so long?” she offers hesitantly. “I don’t know anything more than you do. But… I don’t know if I think that was the real Chie. It felt like a… fake image?”

You look at her oddly. “What? Why do you say that? Because you’ve been friends with her longer?” As if ‘being friends’ gives you a superhuman connection with someone—you _have_ to call bullshit on that.

“Well,” she says, “maybe the fact that her words weren’t matching up with her lip movements?”

You stop. Try to get your breathing under control. Think back.  

“Yukiko-senpai… you mean like…”

“…a dubbed martial arts movie,” she finishes. “I mean, doesn’t this whole place look kind of like a cross between a dojo and a low-budget Chinese palace?”

 You frown. The Chinese ceremonial posters glitter with fake gold; you're almost certain you've seen the umbrellas you knocked over in a Jackie Chan movie. Shit, how did you not notice that? Aren't you supposed to be smart? “Okay, but," you say, like you don't believe her except you do, but you can't admit that, "why a martial arts movie?”

“Chie loves them,” says Yukiko. She’s looking at you strangely again. “It’s usually all she can talk about, especially recently, with the sequel to ‘Trial of the Dragon’ out… She didn’t mention?”

“Er—no, she didn’t…” You look away, like you’ve been caught lying. Have you? “I haven’t really known her for that long…”

“I guess you… did just transfer here.”

The two of you sit in silence for a moment, though you can hear tinny faux-Chinese music in the background and the swishing of shitty blades swinging from the ceiling that, presumably, some B-grade martial arts actor will have a fight scene through. Man, this place can’t give you a break. You try your best to block it out until it’s almost peaceful—if you can look away from Yukiko. Who’s holding out your kama to you.

“You dropped this,” she says.  

You don’t move.

“I don’t know if I can do this alone, Adachi-kun,” Yukiko says softly.

Geez—and that’s why you promised her, yeah, you know. Why’d you have to go and do that? Now you’ve made this shitty contract and you can’t go back on your word without looking stupid. You should be sensible about this; you can’t _die_ for the sake of saving face.  

“ _Please_ ,” she says.  

“I—I don’t _know_ ,” you complain. “Please, just, leave me alone for a second, okay?”

“Adachi-kun—“

“Senpaiiii,” you whine.  

“But we’re so close, we saw Chie _right there_ —“

“I don’t want to _die_ , Senpai,” you say at last. She must understand this, at least?

Her face crumples. “I don’t want _Chie_ to die.”

“Let’s contact the police, then!” Your hands are shaking again, and you look away. “Let’s leave it to the adults—“

“Adachi-kun, if there’s anything that being manager of the Amagi Inn has taught me, it’s that adults are just better at improvisation and saving face,” she says coldly. You stare at her, and she flushes and drops her eyes. “A-And the police won’t be able to—“

“—do it quickly enough, you’ve said,” you say sourly.  

“It’s true!”

“But it’s better than risking my life here! We have no idea what’s going on; we’re in way over our heads! Don’t you get that? We could _die_ here; those things back there were ready to eat us! We're _both_ just as likely to end up hanging from a telephone pole as the enka singer or news reporter or Chie-senpai!”

“Chie is my _best friend_!”

“So you’ll risk your life for her?!”  

“I have to!” she cries. “You don’t understand!”

“No, I don’t!” You scramble to your feet, and though you’re standing far over Yukiko’s head, you’re also backing away. “Chie-senpai’s not going to get you the things you want in life! She’s not going to get you a job or a husband or a paycheck! Whatever they are, Chie-senpai can’t fulfill your hopes and dreams, unless your hopes and dreams are so small that all you want to do is hang out with high school friends for the rest of your life!” you say, except that you’re shouting now, or maybe hyperventilating at the same time. Yukiko stares at you in wide-eyed shock, but you can’t seem to stop. “She’s not the end-all, be-all of your life! You’ll grieve for days and cry at her funeral and it’ll suck and maybe it’ll keep sucking for the rest of your life whenever you see a martial arts movie or green sports jackets, but life will go on without her and it’s really not _that important_!”

“ _He’s right, you know._ ”

 Neither of you move. Mostly, you stare at Yukiko, most of your angry tirade sucked into shock; she looks down at herself as if checking if she could have said it on—what, on accident? She stutters: “I-I—“

“ _Oh, please, Adachi-kun, help me! I absolutely_ need _Chie back, you don’t understand! God,_ ” says Yukiko’s voice, “ _can you_ hear _yourself? How twisted your own logic is?_ ”

The fog parts, and Yukiko steps through—but Yukiko is sitting on the floor looking like she wants to cling to your pant leg, which you hope she doesn’t because you’re two seconds from bolting for it. “ _I can’t do this by myself_ ,” the fog-Yukiko mimics, and laughs, high and mocking. The way she looks down her nose at you makes you feel like she’s sitting on a throne. “ _I need Chie back so—what? So I can cling to_ her _, instead?_ ”

“S-Stop that!” Yukiko cries. She doesn’t stand up, only shrinks away. “What are you?!”

“ _I’m you, clearly,_ ” says the thing that looks like Yukiko. “ _Don’t you see? I even know all the right things to say to guests at the inn: Please enjoy your meal! How many people are staying with you? Hot spring hours are open now! Please come again! Please take me with you from this horrid inn! Oh, no,”_ it says, and frowns. “ _Was I not supposed to say that?_ ”

“I never--!”

“— _thought that? Because I know I have, and I’m you_ ,” it interrupts. “ _Because more and more, lately, you’ve been realizing—Chie_ can’t _help you, can she? You can throw yourself at her and make yourself her princess, but you can’t make her your prince._ ”

“Yukiko-senpai, what’s going on? What are you doing?!” Shit, shit, you sound like you're on the verge of crying.

Yukiko opens her mouth, but: “ _Nothing, that’s what,_ ” interrupts the other. “ _Oh, no, I didn’t ask to be born here! I didn’t ask to die here! I didn’t ask for every step in between to be managed like an employee sign-in sheet! Boo-hoo,"_ says the fog-Yukiko, scowling. _"And what are you doing about it? Clinging to Adachi-kun, your_ kouhai _, just_ begging _him to bring Chie back to you so you can cling to_ her _, instead!_

_“And I think you and I both know, out of all this bullshit, what the absolute worst part is, don’t we?”_ says the fog-Yukiko, and she leans forward to smile with sickly yellow eyes. “ _He’s right: she can’t save you_ anyway _.”_

“Stop!” Yukiko cries, her head in her hands. “Stop it, you’re wrong! I don’t feel like that! I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’re not me!” The other Yukiko begins to laugh, your words catch in your throat, and Yukiko shrieks: “ _You’re not me_!”

“ _You’re right_ ,” says the fog-Yukiko quietly, and laughs, louder and louder until you've clapped your hands over your ears. “ _I’m_ me _, now! And I’m going to find a new prince and leave you here to_ rot _!”_

She swells, shadows oozing from her and drawing near, until a gust knocks both you and Yukiko off your feet. Your head throbs and your vision spins; and when you can see what little you can in the fog, you see a giant red bird crowing from a birdcage that swings from the ceiling. You scream.

“ _I am a shadow,_ ” intones the bird, “ _the true self! Prove to me that you can be my prince!_ ”

“Senpai!” you shout, and shake Yukiko’s shoulder roughly. She doesn’t move, her half-lidded eyes rolled upward. Shit, _shit_. The monster crows and shrieks with laughter, spreading its wings wide with terrible joy to knock the swinging blades clean off their chains, and you think you can see smoke seeping from her feathers. You sling Yukiko’s arm over your shoulder and haul ass to the door, only to find the handle won’t turn. You dump Yukiko on the ground (sorry but not really) and ram your shoulder into it; it holds firm. You pick up one of the kama and swing the blade tip-first into the wood.

“ _Don’t you dare!_ ”

You spin around in time to see _fire_ in your face; you shriek again and throw yourself to the ground. The fire explodes over your head. You can smell your own hair burning.  

“ _I won’t let you run,_ ” the bird screams. “ _If you won’t be my prince, I’ll pulverize you myself!_ ”

The birdcage swings lower, almost skimming the ground, and the bird rears back her head and stretches her wings wide. You leap over Yukiko’s body and dodge along the wall but there's nowhere to go; you feel fire inches from your back. Your blood is pounding in your ears. You can’t think; you can’t think at all. You’re going to die. You never finished anything that mattered; not your perfect records, or becoming number one in your class, or complying with your mother’s insistence on grades, or the cabbages you’d bought for her, or coming out to the sticks for no good reason. You’ll hang from a telephone pole tomorrow, and Narukami will never solve your case. Your homework will stay undone by the televisions. Your mother will cry over all the work she put into you and didn’t get back. You just wanted to eat good food instead of boiled cabbages. Teddie will stay locked in his desk drawer. You wanted to feed and maybe hug Narukami’s cats, just once; you wondered what a hug from Chie would feel like but never got one; you never rode on Yosuke’s bike—

“PERSONA!” is what comes out of your mouth. _What the fuck?_ is what you think, and then it feels like your head has been split in half, your skull has shattered and your brain is drying in the open air; your fingers are in your hair trying to keep your head together and it won’t stop and your gut is burning and your lungs are crawling through your ribs and your throat hurts and the enka singer is screaming in your ears—

* * *

 

_Igor looks out the submarine windows at the silent water, shakes his head, and sighs. Margaret closes the compendium and her eyes. A small, crumpled paper lies on Igor's table, feathery light and ghostly thin and bearing your name in dark, dark ink._

_“Oh, dear.”_

 

* * *

 

“—chi-kun? Can you hear me? Please open your eyes!”

The first thing you see is Yukiko’s face hovering above yours. Your head hurts, a lot now, and you groan. She smiles in such relief you think tears might spill from her eyes. “Thank goodness you’re okay.”

“Please define okay,” you whine.

She gives you an exasperated sigh, but her mouth is smiling all the same. “Do you know what happened?” she asks.  

“Uhhh,” you say, holding your head. It's still ringing, like a gong vibrating after the sound has died. “I know what happened, but… I have no idea what _happened_ \--" You sit bolt upright. "The giant bird!”

“The what?”

"The thing that's shooting fire and trying to kill us and..." You trail away as Yukiko frowns. You glance around, see your vision blur, rub your eyes, and try again. "Her," you say, in accusation, and point. The crumpled heap of the fog-Yukiko lies motionless on the ground, her back to you and face covered by silky black hair. "She turned into a... a monster," you say quietly, "and you fainted. She was a giant bird in a cage."

Yukiko, abruptly, flushes hard. "A bird in a cage," she echoes. "A monster..."

"What was that thing? Where'd it come from?" you mumble, and Yukiko looks away; but not before you see pain in her eyes, and you can't help looking down to see if there's blood. She's covered in the red of her uniform, but no blood. Only the fog-Yukiko sprawled across the floor.

Oh, you realize. Of course. There's nothing that hits harder than the truth.

Your head pounds. You can't think, you don't know what to say. Biwa, Kasumigaura, Saroma, Inawashiro? You can hear the fog-Yukiko breathing, smooth and gentle; Yukiko doesn't seem to be breathing at all.

"I was really hoping you had a gun I could use," you say, then clap your hands over your mouth.

She stares at you, then away again. "I... I know. I saw," she says. "That's why I didn't give you one."

"Oh, er, good. You know what I mean, then? I just... I told you there was crazy stuff in here. It would have been useful, right? Considering the, uh, bird," you say as if it's a joke. She winces, but it looks a bit like a smile. "I know it's pretty bad," you babble, "but I always thought guns were super cool. It's so violent, I know, you're not supposed to like them, but I always stare when I see movies with guns in them. One pull of a finger and you can make so much happen. I can't help what my brain thinks." You shrug helplessly. "I mean, isn't everyone like that?"

Yukiko looks down at her folded hands, and for the first time, you recognize the emotion in her as despair.  "Monsters?" she whispers.

"I don't know!" you say, throwing your hands up in exasperation. "Maybe everyone _is_ full of shit! Maybe that thing _is_ you. I'd be entirely unsurprised. Don't look at me. Is it?"

Her bottom lip trembles.

"Is it?" you repeat.

Her teeth latch on hard to her lip. "Chie," she says, "is my friend."

You say nothing.

"Maybe our friendship isn't founded on purity," Yukiko says, desperately, "but I'm still her friend! It's okay to like someone out of your own weakness, isn't it?! It doesn't change that I like her, even if I also need her. It doesn't change that she can make me laugh after a bad day and I'll watch her terrible kung-fu movies with her. It doesn't change the times she's helped me during the inn's busy season and the beef bowl challenges we've done and our shared umbrellas on rainy days and the sleepovers we had as children, does it?!"

You recoil on reflex and her face crumples. You want to grab her and stop her shoulders from shaking, but you've already done the damage. You wish it was raining and you had an umbrella, so you could tuck her under the shelter like a ratty, ugly cat and it'd be that simple. The room might be spinning with your bewilderment. "I don't know," you admit.

"You don’t know," she repeats dully.

"The only person who can know that is you," you snap. "You heard yourself, didn't you? Stop depending on me! I'm just your kouhai."

"But--"

"All I know," you say, irritated, "is that you've got shit and I've got shit and so does everyone else. I don't have any other answers than what I know. If you wanna know if you and your friendship are anything more than shit, you have to find that out for yourself, won't you?"

Yukiko says nothing, but you can hear her breathing, deep and panicked against the fog-Yukiko's steady rhythm, then smoother, until you can only hear their breath together. When she looks up, you follow her gaze to see the fog-Yukiko's yellow eyes, staring at the two of you with the dispassion of a corpse. "You're right about me," says Yukiko softly. Fog-Yukiko blinks, and her yellow eyes soften. "But I have to believe that so is he," Yukiko continues, almost apologetic. "So I have to leave now. Please don't think I'm running away; I'll always remember you--I'll always remember _myself_. I just... can't be content to stay."

Yukiko pulls herself to her feet, to her full height, and the fog-Yukiko slowly stands with her; two mirror images, both unmovable. "You might be the truth, but you're only one side," Yukiko says, and they nod together. "I won't rest until I have it all."

The fog-Yukiko smiles, and fades into the clear air. Yukiko sighs. She looks up at the fog, then at you; she smiles kindly, as her other self did to her, and collapses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if i ever don't update for almost two months again feel free to send me angry messages. i s2g i won't be that douchebag author who updates once a millennia and is like "OMG SORRY WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN XDDD" and then it does every time


	6. Konohana Sakuya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not as sorry as I am, Senpai.

_AFTERNOON_ , _PROBABLY_

So giant bird came out of Yukiko's brain, and then you killed it with a magic word and a headache, and then you found out that the other Yukiko was totally spot on about Yukiko being secretly a spineless loser, and you proved you'll never become a counselor, and Yukiko made it vanish anyway by admitting it was kind of right, and then she fainted. You're terrified for your life, but, at the _very least_ , you’re not _bored_. You'd like things to make sense soon, though; you have to be smart enough to piece this together. The bird called itself a "Shadow, the true self"—well, okay, but what does that _mean_?

You’re tapping the frame of the barely-open door, watching the viscous lump with eyes drag itself closer to the door to your room, then back again down the hall. _It_ never gets any smarter, that's for sure. So _irritating._ Your head won't stop hurting, the fog is gross in your throat, and both your headache and this little black lump are driving you up the wall. Good god, _do_ something. You have math to do. You wish your headache would make sense. You can make it make sense. If you knew Yukiko was going to be out this long, you would've brought your homework. You can't think straight at all.

Yukiko groans. "Persona," she murmurs.

The lump stops and blinks its beady red eyes. "Senpai?" you say softly. You pray to everything you never believed in that animate sludge lumps don't have ears.

She makes another noncommittal noise and rolls over, blinking as if through water and rubbing her head. "Adachi-kun?" she calls.

You bid your stupid lump friend a mental goodbye, shut the door, and kneel down beside your spineless loser friend. "Ah, good morning, senpai," you say. "It's only been ten minutes or so. I would offer you water, but, uh, I don't have any..."

She shakes her head. "I'm okay. Adachi-kun, I think I know how we can save Chie. You won't even have to fight." She pushes her feet underneath her, but staggers; when you make no move to catch her, she settles on the floor. She winces. "Ugh, is... is this the fog?"

"I mentioned before," you say. "The fog will mess you up." Being able to say ‘I told you so’ cheers you up, though.

"No," Yukiko mumbles, "I think my Persona is still irritated."

She's looking down at the floor; which is good, because you have no idea what expression is on your face. "Persona?" you repeat, neutrally.

"I don't think I did it right," she says, still half-mumbling, "but..."

"But?" you press, leaning forward.

"I can explain on the way."

Your eyebrow twitches. “Why not now?”

Yukiko gingerly lifts herself to her feet again, and this time her two feet hold. She smiles, pleased at her tiny victory. "Please, Adachi-kun. We’ve delayed long enough; it’s time to find Chie."

You barely restrain from scowling. This is _ridiculous_. "Whoa, uh, let's not get ahead of ourselves," you say. "I don't know what this Persona thing is, but can you _use_ it? Can you even walk?"

Yukiko opens her mouth, then closes it. "I… I know how to use it," she offers.

So she can drive herself into the dirt trying to find a girl you both _just established_ was more an emotional crutch than a real friend. Has she learned _nothing_? You grit your teeth to keep your lips from twisting; _Yukiko_ will be the one who needs saving at this rate, and that’s just shoddy planning. "Senpai, it's really not a good idea. We can try again tomorrow."

"We don't know if Chie has a tomorrow," she insists.

You pout. "Well, at this rate, neither will you. And then nobody’s getting saved."

Yukiko breathes out heavily, not really a sigh of exasperation as it is her obviously gasping for breath, then lowers herself down again. Okay, that’s a start. You clench your hands worriedly; think, Tohru, think! “Umm… I have a protein bar in my bag? I could go get it, and we’ll see if that helps…” You scrub your hands through your hair. “Oh, but I shouldn’t leave you here by yourself. We could go back? You really look like you need some food. Not that you’re underweight! If anything—no, wait—I mean—you look—sorry,” you mumble, “sorry. You look tired. It’d be a bad idea to do anything reckless.”

Yukiko is blushing hard. You made everything uncomfortable. Good work, Tohru.

"...Thank you for the offer," she manages. Her fingers fold demurely, then proceed to strangle each other. "And… thank you for being here. I don't know... what I would have done if I had to confront the other, um, me. If I’d had to do that by myself."

"Uh," you say, unsure if what you're feeling is discomfort or distaste. "You're... welcome?"

"But thanks to your advice, I have new resolve to find Chie. I need to settle the matter of our friendship before I can rest.” She looks away. “I’d like to tell her the truth of our friendship, if I can find it. I hope she can accept me as I am.”

It's like watching the sludge lump crawling down the hallway and then back again, perpetually in motion but wearing a rut in the hallway floor. "...If you say so," you manage. The very words taste gross.

Yukiko takes another deep breath, visibly steeling herself for the plunge: "So... is it okay? If I rely on you for a little longer?"

You bite your lip. Your math homework is still waiting at the entrance. And the protein bar. She didn’t even ask if _you_ could accept her for how she is; she’s just taking it for granted. What does it matter what she thinks of you? She’s only number one in her grade. Geez, this headache is really messing with your head. Weren’t there monsters? You might die. You might _die_ ; c’mon, Tohru, think about giant teeth slurping their way through your intestines. Okay, no, don’t think about that. You’ve survived this long. How did you survive this long? You’re smart enough to figure this out. You said—you said—

 Still woozy, Yukiko bends down to pick up her fans and your kama; when she hands the kama out to you, her eyes are unfocused. "Adachi-kun, I know this place is dangerous," Yukiko says, swaying on the spot. "But now I can fight for us both. You won't be anywhere near danger."

You chew your bottom lip. "With your... 'Persona.'"

"I will take full responsibility for your safety.”

\--you have _math homework_. You were going to email Narukami. You were going to turn in your first math assignment with a stellar perfect score—

"How did you know it was called a Persona?" you ask.

"Hm? Oh, I..." She frowns. "Well, it just popped out of my mouth. I don't really know..."

"Right," you say, and take the kama gingerly. "What else?"

***

 _What else_ is that Konohana Sakuya is beautiful.

She spreads her wings of sakura petals, Yukiko shouts, “Agi!” and the monster _explodes into fire_. The burst of heat almost knocks you back, and you can _feel_ it like a wave of physical force shaking your body. It’s all you can see; you’re drinking it with your eyes, you’re burning all over and opening your arms wide. The air crackles, sizzles, until the fire slips away into the charred walls. The monster is gone. The hallway is clean.

Konohana Sakuya closes her arms with grace, and vanishes. Yukiko staggers and falls.

“Senpai!” you exclaim, and rush to her side, except then you nearly put an elbow in her face because you’re still looking at where the monster was. She’s panting heavily now, clutching her arm like she can pull herself together. She moves, and winces.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps. “It’s just—this headache. I know you’re affected by the fog too. I can keep going…”

You don’t feel fine. But you can't feel your headache, either. You feel _drunk_.

“Senpai, please, let’s go get the protein bar,” you urge. “And then we can keep going.”

She blinks. Her eyebrows struggle to pull together, like she’s pulling together some thought; but then she closes her eyes, and only says, “I’ll come with you.”

You drag her all the way back to the entrance, carefully monitoring her steps, and proceed to dig out of your bag not just a protein bar but dried fruit, melted candy, crackers, and a (suspiciously old) fruit milk. “Don’t worry about it,” you say, waving your hands when she protests. “It’s from my stash for studying. I have tons of it at home. You need it more than I do.” It’s even true on all counts; your mother stocks the pantry with nasty, shriveled, pre-packaged products she can buy on sale from supermarket chains (like Junes) with little time cost to herself, _and_ you’re not the one who can barely walk. Studying in libraries for hours isn’t very strenuous anyway. You use the snacks more as replacements for cabbage dinners.

Yukiko, for her part, eats all of it, which is bizarre to think about, that a slender, frail girl like her packed away all those calories. By the time she’s done, there’s a shiny pile of snack wrappers folded in her lap. “Well, it’s… not the time or place to worry about my diet. This is the body I’m using to rescue Chie with,” she explains, haltingly, like she's confused at her own logic.

This is perhaps the first thing to come out of her mouth that you agree with.

“I feel better, now. Thank you for the food,” she says, quite formally, then stands without even a waver. “Shall we try battle with my Persona again?”

That’s the second thing you agree with. You clip your bag together, throw it over your shoulder, and decide you’re going to make the two of you get on _fantastically_.

***

You teach yourself real fast how to make maps, using the backs of old review sheets and a Sharpie. And, whaddaya know, you’re not half bad at it, which is sort of a pleasant surprise, except not all that much because you aced geometry last year. If only there was a class on map-making; then it’d really be useful. For now, you mark down a bright red X with great relish where Yukiko’s blown up monsters of all shapes and sizes—molted ravens, walking hands, flying dice, tiny kings, skittish tables; you say “there,” she says “Konohana Sakuya!” and it’s fire, explosions, ground-shaking _power_. They don’t stand a chance. You can barely hold your hands still enough to mark the stairs when you find and climb them; you pull out a fresh sheet of paper, and begin again.

“Amazing, Senpai,” you say, when Yukiko starts to lag on the second floor. She smiles uncomfortably and looks away. “I bet Chie-senpai’s close,” you try again; she straightens her shoulders and nods.

When her breathing grows ragged, the absurd thought that she might fall asleep walking pops into your head. _You’re losing her_ , you think. Her foot lands awkwardly on her next step, and she wipes the sweat from her upper lip. You open your mouth: _Are you okay?_

“Did I tell you about how Chie found out about this place?” you say instead.

You’re not waiting for a response. You suck as much fog into your lungs as you can and start talking _,_ like you've got a word count to meet and it's just shy of infinity, because holy hell you're going to keep Yukiko for as long as you can breathe. Yukiko doesn't seem to mind; she seems bemused, and you can work with that. You tell her about the time you fell into your TV and ended up in Junes; she asks if Chie's bento was any good, and you tell her it was delicious. She, in turn, talks about Chie's fat dog and the fur it sheds all over her clothes; she admits she suspects she's a cat person, but she's never had a chance to find out. She helps you remember the names of all the stores in the Shopping District; mentions the legend of Kanji Tatsumi and the biker gangs. You ask if she's ever met a little girl named Nanako Dojima, and recommend that Yukiko make her acquaintance. Yukiko _has_ , however, heard of Ryotaro Dojima, the detective assigned to the murders of the enka singer and the news reporter.

“I wonder where the monsters' bodies go--we know where the _people_ who die here go,” she wonders, in her faint, high voice. “But the monsters... do they burn up in the fire, or do the monster corpses disappear natura—“

“I see the stairs!” you call loudly. “I bet she’s on the next floor, right, Senpai?” You draw a rectangle for the stairs, humming to yourself as you gauge the proportions.

“Next floor,” comes the faint reply.

Yukiko is tottering behind you, her dark eyes unfocused and feet unsteady. “Are you feeling sick?” you ask. “I have more snacks, if that’ll help.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t… think that’ll help this time.”

You resist the sudden urge to crumple your map. No, you worked hard on that; swallow it down and smooth the urge over. Smile if you can. “Er, water, maybe?”

“Thank you for your concern,” she says, as if in a haze. “Um… did you hear that?”

“…No? What was I supposed to hear?”

Her expression is strained. “…Maybe if I could just… sit down for a while…”

You swallow hard, then twice, then thrice. Then: “Sure thing, Senpai,” you say, with bitter acid in your throat, and even spit out: “Take your time.”

She perches herself on the first step and rests her head in her hands, looking like a student fighting the urge to fall asleep in class. _Please_ ; as if you aren’t the master of staying awake through a lecture on half an hour’s sleep. If she actually studied instead of relying on all those free brains she was born with, she could be powering through the third floor by now instead of puttering around like a drunk old man. What about Chie? Wasn’t she the one who insisted the two of you go through this hellhole for her not-friend? You stand up and pace. Shit, your steps aren’t all that straight either. You sit down again. You pull out your map, but there’s nothing more to draw.

“I know you don’t want to be here. Thank you, Adachi-kun,” Yukiko says quietly, although it comes out more like a wheeze.

Oh, yeah, _you_ don’t want to be here. She’s the one who won’t _move_. “It’s nothing. Don’t mention it, Senpai.”

“And…” She rubs at her eyelids, but they slide shut again. “And I don’t think I thanked you… for seeing that side of me. And still being here…”

“Well, you know how it is—I did promise,” you reply with a weak laugh. And what a stupid, _stupid_ promise that was. Why did you take her hand? Why did you make that contract?

She opens her eyes and looks at you, tries to _really_ look at you with the same clarity she had before, but her eyes are glassy. You're honestly glad. “How many people would have accepted that side of me, do you think?” she mumbles.

You wince inwardly, and maybe outwardly. Who knows how many people would cling to their delusions of human goodness? _And_ who says you accepted anything of hers? You only knew her ugliness to be true all along; there's a difference. “Dunno,” you mumble back.

“Do you think—“ and she pauses here, deliberately, with new strength in her voice “—do you think Chie will be able to accept me?”

You frown, scrunching up your eyebrows. “…There’s really no knowing that until we find her.”

Yukiko, if anything, looks even more worried. Hopefully that’ll motivate her to move her ass.

You’re desperately pleased when she does, indeed, stand up and smooth out her skirt. “Okay,” she says. “Um… if I fall going down these stairs, I hope you won’t mind catching me.” She blushes, but you could have sworn her blush was stronger before—what, is her blood not flowing? Seriously? “I’m sorry, that’s a bit forward to ask from a boy… I never really had a lot of guy friends before. I'm sorry.”

“No… problem?”

She makes her way unsteadily up the stairs. You think you should be pleased that she’s acknowledged you as a boy, but mostly you wish she’d go faster. Or you wish she’d actually fall, and you could drag her slow ass to the next floor for her. You could carry her around over your shoulder if you have to; she can be as sleepy as she wants with her eyes closed and you can aim her Persona for her. Hold and point; easy as pie. The toe of her shoe bumps the edge of the stair as she heaves her leg up, at about _maybe_ twice the speed of a dead snail. You grip the railing and refrain from throwing your bag.

You hate, hate, _hate_ group projects. They never get the same grade as you.

***

“There!” says Yukiko suddenly. “Did you hear _that_?”

It’s the most life you’ve seen in her for the whole third floor; you nearly jump out of your skin. “What? What?” you say, turning in circles. “Hear what?”

She holds a finger to her lips and you shut up immediately. Shit, if it’s something _new_ coming to kill you—Yukiko’s been fielding monsters like you field teacher’s questions, but if you gotta make a break for it, she’s in no state to run and you don’t know if you can _actually_ carry her. She presses her finger more insistently to her lips, and at last you hear it:

“ _Yukiko,_ ” says a voice. “ _When I told Yukiko she looks good in red…_ ”

It sighs away, almost wistfully.

“Chie?” says Yukiko, but her voice cracks and she coughs. She clears her throat. “Chie!”

“What _was_ that?”

Yukiko visibly strains her ears. “I—“

“ _Yukiko_ does _look good in red,_ ” the voice sighs, stronger now. “ _She looks good in pink, and in blue, and in green…in purple and yellow and white…_ ”

Yukiko shuts up.

“ _So pretty and feminine… dainty, frail…_ ”

Yukiko starts blushing. (Vaguely, you wonder if you shouldn’t have worried about Chie dating Yosuke. That would be just a thing you would do, crushing on a girl like that.)

“ _…slender, weak… shaking like cherry blossoms in the wind. Do boys find that attractive? Is that what they want?”_

The voice fades into tinny Chinese music and muffled sound effects. You look at Yukiko. Yukiko looks at you.

“Maybe it means she’s close?” says Yukiko. She braces herself against the wall. “Then… just a little farther?”

You purse your lips. Yukiko slides across the wall, leaning on it like a crutch. “Just a little farther,” she mumbles to herself. “Then I will never need to use my Persona again.”

You can’t breathe.

“Nobody will die. I can embrace my shadow and my Persona will vanish. We can be friends. We’ll be friends. Chie and I…”

“ _She can’t even pick out her own favorite color._ ”

Yukiko’s fingers clench on the wall.

“ _Always needing me to do things… always relying on me to solve it. Isn’t it funny? The simplest things like talking to boys… and she can’t do it without me.”_

"I see a door," Yukiko says weakly, and points through the fog. "Adachi-kun..." She holds out her hand. "Please. I'm sorry to ask this of you, but..." And she doesn't so much lean on your shoulder as she does collapse on it; yeah, her breast is smashed up against your side but she's also really _heavy_. Like, _really_ heavy. Your mouth is sputtering nonsense but her leg pushes your knee from behind and your legs, on reflex, start moving down the hallway towards the door.

“ _And that’s okay,”_ says the voice. Yukiko is trembling against your shoulder. “ _It’s all okay. I accept that side of her…”_

Yukiko clutches your shirt hard.

“ _…because people only ask their superiors for help.”_  

All you can hear is the sound of Yukiko’s breathing. The voice giggles, whispery thin. You hear another voice behind the door, proud but panicked.

“ _And she knows it, too. Knows that she’s nothing without me, even though she’s the one everyone wants… When she looks at me with such desperation, needing me, depending on me… Man! Do I get a charge outta that!_ ”

The distant voice again, louder now.

“ _I’ll never let her go. She’s my princess, and so long as I have her, I’m a prince. Because we’re best friends, aren’t we? Best friends forever…”_

“…Please keep walking,” Yukiko whispers. “The door is right there.”

You almost dump her off your shoulder right then and there. “Wh-What, you don’t believe the voice?”

“Do you?”

“Wow, I mean, a lot of crazy stuff has happened and I—you know that thing that came out of you,” you plead. “I mean… this place also came from Chie’s mind, didn’t it? It’s logical, isn’t it? To think that—that—“

“Chie has other sides as well? That those other sides might be here like mine?”

Carefully, Yukiko pulls herself free from your shoulder and slumps against the wall. She turns her head to stare at the door. Less than five feet away, now. She winces, and begins to move.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” you snap. “You’re going to get yourself killed in there!”

“Chie—“

“Chie’s as much your friend as you are hers!”

“I—“

“And we _both_ saw how much of a friend you are. Stop and think,” you plead. “What are you killing yourself for?”

Yukiko braces herself against the door. She wraps her hands around the handles, but doesn't pull. Her breath is loud and harsh; she probably couldn't, you realize, even if she was going to. And she won't. Not without her crutch--not without you.

You're prepared to take this stand. This madness has gone on long enough _,_ on _both_ of your parts. Take responsibility for your decisions? Well, this is the decision you've made. "Think about what you just heard," you plead. "Can _you_ accept that?"

"I don't know," she snaps. You recoil, and she looks away, horrified at herself. "Just... doing nothing," she says, panting, "is still doing something. No matter _what_ my questionable friendship with Chie is, I won't be a murderer by default."

You flinch. "You can't believe that," you plead. "You _don't_ accept her." She doesn’t. It’s not really possible to accept a person’s ugly sides--

"I don't know. Maybe it is such a terrible thing to do the right thing for your own reasons, but Chie has to be alive for me to accept her," she admits. "But what about _you_? Could you live with that guilt? Think--really think--you heard the enka singer, didn't you?"

“No, I didn’t,” you say quickly.

“But you said you heard her screaming the night before she…”

“I didn’t!”

“…died.” Yukiko looks downright green. "How she..."

How the news reporter died alone here, confused and alone. How the enka singer was confronted by the worst parts of herself at the end of her life. How the monsters found Mayumi Yamano, how she hid and ran, how she gasped for air and took in fog, how Yamano-san ran a little slower and hid a little longer--

No--

\--how Hiiragi-san couldn't find the way out, no matter how long she looked. How the monsters tracked her down at her limit. How they dug their claws into her, opened their mouths, and tore her apart, bit into her flesh, through blood and bone, how _you heard her screaming_ \--

You clap your hands over your mouth and breathe hard through your nose. Yukiko watches as you don’t meet her eyes, and swallow the stomach acid back down. Your esophagus burns. Your mouth tastes like your lunch meat and sour bile. Ugh, Chie's bento hadn't tasted much better.

"A-Adachi-kun?" you hear Yukiko say. "Are you okay?"

"I'm f-fine! Just... fine," you manage.

She leans back in relief, the door opens—ah, shit, you realize, as Yukiko's face changes to alarm. It's _push_ , not _pull_.

Yukiko collapses on the floor and wriggles in pain as the doors swing closed on her legs. You can’t see her face; she’s not getting up. You leap forward to prop the doors open instead of crushing her thighs, but her arms are shaking, and it occurs to you that Yukiko is a soprano—if she screamed, she’d sound like--

"Yukiko!" a voice exclaims, and it's not yours. Chie's trembling on the other side of the door with a pair of glasses perched on her head, but Chie is also lazily hopping from foot to foot, fiddling with her martial arts training uniform. "No, don't!" cries Chie, raising her arms when Yukiko, finally, raises her head. "Don't look at me!"

" _You know they heard_ ," says the other Chie. " _Guess what? They even know it's true._ "

Chie claps her hands over her ears. "Stop it! No! Not in front of Yukiko--"

" _Not in front of_ you," says the other, face twisting into a scowl. " _You just don't want to hear it yourself! Always about you, you, you! Using everyone and everything to feed your own desires!_ "

"Shut UP!"

Chie raises her fist and swings; the other ducks, right into Chie's foot, and reels back, holding its face. "How do you like _that_?" Chie declares, but her voice sounds like she's going to cry.

"Senpai, wait!" you hear yourself call. "Don't provoke it! You'll make it worse!"

She stares at you like she's never seen you before. To be fair, you feel like you've never seen her before, either; not with all you know about her now. "Adachi-kun?" she says, blank, then shakes her head. "Don't believe any of this," she pleads. "It's lying! I don't know what it is, but--"

The other Chie's arms snake around her neck in a headlock, knocking Chie’s glasses off; Chie chokes and drives her elbow into its gut, but it holds tight. " _I'm you, and he knows it!_ " it seethes, blood pouring from its nose and staining its mouth lipstick-red.

"No!" Chie gasps, thrashing, "No, you're... you can't! You're not me!"

" _I can_ ," the other croons, and bares its bloody teeth. Its pretty face inflates, swells, grows black; Chie’s eyes flutter close. " _I can do anything, because if you won't accept me, I'll be my own person now! And I'll stand tall on your corpses!"_ The black mass stretches tall, dropping Chie like a doll. " _I'll crush you!_ "

"Senpai!" you shriek; Chie doesn't move, but Yukiko groans and pushes herself up on her arms. "Use your Persona!"

Yukiko's staring up at the tower of girls, struggling to support the leathery dominatrix perched on top. It brings one gloved hand to its mask and draws a smile across with blood; its glossy hair writhes and it cracks its whip along the floor. The faceless girls under its weight stagger and wince. Yukiko stares. “Senpai!” you cry again, and shake her shoulders. She blinks, blankly, but doesn’t look away.

“ _You dare resist me?”_ Chie’s voice growls, distorted and booming. “ _I don’t need you anymore! A pretty flower like yourself belongs pierced beneath my heel!_ ”

It raises its whip; Yukiko stares, uncomprehending, and you seize her by the waist and barely throw yourselves out of the way. Yukiko rolls to a stop, skirt twisted around her thighs, but her head only turns to stare at Chie’s unconscious body. “Senpai, please!” you beg, voice pitching on hysteria. “She’s going to kill us!”

She blinks, and fear flickers across her eyes. She raises a hand (her fingers trembling violently) and opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a breathy whisper. She coughs, and tries again: “K-Konohana… Sakuya…!”

The Persona blooms to life above you. “Agi,” Yukiko whispers. Fire streaks across the dominatrix’s leather boots, and it grunts, but doesn’t fall. “Agi,” Yukiko breathes again, eyes fluttering closed. The fire misses entirely.

“ _Shut up!_ ” it snarls. It raises its whip, but doesn’t crack it; you notice the frost gathering in the air around you just as it crystallizes and explodes.

When you open your eyes, you can feel warm blood sliding down your frozen cheek. The room literally spins, and you try to hold on to the floor. “Adachi-kun,” says Yukiko, quietly. “I…”

Her hand is cold on your arm. “Senpai?” you say, dazedly. You meet her eyes; she’s barely holding her head up.

She swallows hard. “Dia,” she sighs. Her head drifts down to rest on her arm.

The room stops spinning—your head feels clear, even buzzing with energy, like you’ve just chugged four cups of coffee. You can’t feel the blood anymore. “Senpai?” you say. She doesn’t move. “Senpai?” you say again, tentatively shaking her. Her eyes are closed.

“ _Serves her right,_ ” Chie’s voice says, coldly. The blood-smile on the monster-Chie’s mask drips, like teeth.

“I knew it,” you say. Your voice is faint and wavering. “There’s no such thing as friendship, is there?”

The dominatrix cocks her head. The eyes in the mask slits crinkle, bemused.

“Bonds, human connection—it’s all false. This is the true face of humanity. There’s no such thing as an unselfish bond. You’d all kill each other if it suited you.”

Chie, her sports jacket torn and expression still frozen in panic and shame. Yukiko, deathly pale and arm outstretched.

“I knew it,” you say, testing the weight of the words on your shoulders. It’s heavy enough to be true, but you find your head buried in your hands, face scrunched like you’ve swallowed a lemon. Your heart rebels against your ribs. “I _knew_ it,” you say, but it tastes vile, like meat and bile and Chie’s bento. “I _knew_ _it_ ,” you say, feeling wet warmth spreading on your palms, coating your eyelashes.

“ _Shut up,”_ scoffs the dominatrix. _Shut up_ , it says, just as it did before it—before Yukiko—in the same tone Chie uses with Yosuke, laughing on the roof—

“ _You_ shut up!” you snap. “I don’t care, I don’t care, wear whatever face you want—I want nothing to do with you! _Leave me out of it_!” And you suck in a breath full of fog and: “ _PERSONA!_ ”

Your head splits open and you’re screaming, but the dominatrix screams with you, the room goes black as something great rips itself free of your soul and it doesn’t feel that bad, not at all. Not compared to the thudding of your sour, sour heart. 

***

This time when you wake up, it’s Chie’s face you see.

She sits with her back to her other self, hunched over her knees, fiddling with the glasses, and utterly silent. Curled by her skirt is Yukiko, with her long black hair fanned out and her bangs combed smooth. Yukiko’s face is at peace, like a corpse’s—your stomach revolts—but Chie’s fingers brush her cheek, and Yukiko’s eyelids twitch, and both of you breathe out. Chie’s expression winds ever tighter. Behind her, clenching her fists, Chie’s other self looks away.

“You can make it go away if you accept it,” you offer.

Chie flinches like you’ve struck her, and she snatches her hand back. Something small in you shrivels ever smaller. “A-Ah, Adachi-kun…” she says, as if trying for the same casual tone she’d used as she walked Yukiko home and said _I look after my friends_. The other self behind her tenses.

“You should accept it,” you say, unable to keep the resentment out of your voice. “I think it’ll try to kill you if you reject it, and… well. What good is it to reject the truth?”

She curls in on herself. “But Yukiko…”

“ _Yukiko_ ,” the other self snarls.

Chie claps her hands over her ears and shuts her eyes.

“ _I am the shadow,_ ” it intones. “ _The true self.”_

“Face it,” you snap. “This is the truth of your friendship. It’s pretty ugly, isn’t it? But you don’t have a choice. You messed up once already, rejecting it.”

Her eyes are squeezed shut, but you see the tears glinting in the corners. “Hideous,” she mumbles.

Your upper lip curls. “It’s who you are.”

She buries her face in her knees.

“I’ve… let Yukiko down, haven’t I?”

Quietly, her shoulders begin to shake.

“I’m a terrible friend. It wasn’t you; it was me who shouldn’t have…”

Her breath hitches, then again, and again. Rib-wracking sobs fighting their way out of her chest.

“I’m sorry, Yukiko… I’m sorry. This is who I am. I’m so, so sorry…”

Her shadow vanishes into a single tarot card. Dully, Yukiko’s open eyes watch it spin.

***

When you and Chie drag yourselves and Yukiko back through the Junes TV, Yosuke is working the after-hours shift, holding a mop and looking like you’ve murdered his dog before his eyes.

“What _happened_?” he says, flabbergasted, tearing his headphones away from his ears. “What—why didn’t you tell me you were going in? _Why’d_ you go? What’re you—Chie—okay, first aid, first aid, we refilled that this morning,” he mumbles, and bolts around the corner.

You all collapse into the employee break room; or rather, you do, and Chie does her best to lower Yukiko as gently as possible on the couch, her arms straining with the effort. She brushes Yukiko’s bangs from her eyes, then slides to her knees on the floor, wincing as she accidentally sits on the glasses in her pocket. Yosuke cracks open the brand new first aid kid, dropping a roll of bandages and reading the label on a bottle of Advil like he’s never seen one before. “I—I don’t really know—shouldn’t we take her to a hospital?” he says, looking at you like you have answers. “Like, I don’t know what happened in there, but I don’t see any physical injuries on her—“

“Chie first.”

Everybody in the room looks at Yukiko, who coughs weakly. “Her leg is bleeding,” she says faintly.

Chie looks at her own leg, evidently surprised to see the blood pooling on the tile. “Oh, man,” she says. “That doesn’t need stitches, does it?”

“I have no idea how to do stitches,” Yosuke complains, wide-eyed.

Chie chews her bottom lip; reaches out, then changes her mind. “Never mind me. Yukiko, are you… okay?”

“Chie first,” Yukiko repeats, tiredly. “Please.”

Later, after Chie’s leg has been wrapped and bandaged, you manage to get Yukiko to swallow two pills of Advil while Yosuke pulls out his cell phone. Ten minutes later, Yukiko stops breathing; thirty seconds later, Yosuke unlocks the front doors to Junes for paramedics. At 10:08 PM, Yukiko is admitted to Inaba Municipal Hospital. A nurse wheels her into intensive care; another calls the Amagi Inn. Yet another greets Narukami at the reception desk, who in turn speaks to Chie in soft tones; dirty and exhausted, Chie limps away from Yukiko’s room, pulls her bandaged leg into the car with great effort, and lets Narukami shut the police car door behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that dungeon was only four floors high. holy shit, adachi.


	7. Mitsuo Kubo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How about that Amagi Challenge?

_EARLY MORNING_

Your mother throws your homework on your table. It’s a single sheet and flutters down without effect, but you flinch again anyway and look away. “We came here for _you_ and _your_ grades,” she says. “I gave up _my_ job and time with _my_ husband—“

No, your father is overseas; he left on his own.

“—all for _your_ future, to ensure _your_ grades, and you’re getting 95’s? How long as this been going on?”

“This is the first,” you mumble.

"Is this a  _doodle_ on your homework?" You feel like an electric jolt has gone down your spine. "What is this, a bird? Power ranger?" She squints at it. "Is that a person wearing sakura peta--"

"It's nothing," you say quickly.

Her lip curls. She tears the doodle from the corner of the page, and crumples it in her fist. You've never felt so relieved. “You should have talked to Narukami-sensei. I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about him and you’re absolutely squandering him as a resource; I’ve done my job, and it’s time you picked up the slack. I break my back for you and you’ve nothing else to do but get good grades—it’s your _one job_ , you have _one thing_ to do with your life until you grow up. You don’t need to work, you’re not a scholar athlete, no extra-curriculars, no clubs—you’re not in clubs, are you?” she says sharply.

No,” you say.

“You’re not—“ She covers her mouth with her hand. “You’re not speaking to Aoyama-kun, are you?”

“No,” you repeat.

“Then there’s no excuse,” she snaps. “Ask your teacher about extra credit. Every point counts; the moment you slack, it’s a slippery slope down to the rest of the masses. I know what’s best for you; I’m telling you this for your own good. You have Narukami’s number, don’t you? Call him tonight. He can stop working on that kidnapping case for a day to do the job I _pay_ him to do—“

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

“—as manager of the Amagi Inn. Both mother and daughter have declined to confirm if these recent health problems are genetic,” the reporter says, blinking politely through the TV. “Inaba Municipal Hospital has also declined to comment on Yukiko Amagi’s condition. In related news, a student of Yasogami High, Chie Satonaka, has been released from police questioning. Several days ago, Miss Satonaka disappeared for almost forty-eight hours, as reported by her parents. Police have been investigating a potential connection between Miss Amagi’s illness and Miss Satonaka’s disappearance—“

Yosuke rounds the corner of the electronics department; you see, before it happens, the look of recognition in his face, then the smile, and the friendly wave, and the calling of your name, because he's just _so glad_ to see you. Tell you what he's been up to, when his shift ends, wanna hit the Chinese diner later? Why're you making that face, Adachi-kun? Isn't that what friends--

You hoist your books higher in your arms and hurry away.

***

Carl Jung was, according to Yasogami High’s library psychology collection, a Swiss psychiatrist, born in 1875 and died in 1961. While coming up with several ideas on his own that still hold considerable water even today—you’ve taken an MBTI test yourself, once; it said you were _extraverted_ , which was good for a laugh—he was also famously Freud’s greatest fan and greatest critic. (It’s half a chapter in the back of the book, buried under concepts like “the collective unconscious” and something called “individuation”; sounds unimportant.) Primarily, Jung both agreed and disagreed on Freud’s taken on the subconscious. That is, the repressed parts of a self (whatever “self” is; that’s a whole other book you haven’t started yet), mostly composed of the socially unacceptable, the ugly, the personally hated—these parts of the self aren’t excised from a mind upon rejection, but shut away and ignored. Regardless, whoever, of concepts of what constitutes the self as an entirety, what you’re after is Jung’s theories of the _levels_ of self-awareness in relation to the performance of identity: the Persona, the face presented to others and even yourself, and the Shadow, the ugly sides of a person’s self that is, if not repressed from the conscious entirely, then at least is hidden from larger society.

“One steak skewer, please,” you tell the food court cashier, and dog-ear your book page as you dig up the few yen you swiped from your mother’s pockets in the dirty laundry pile. Junes food isn't exactly gourmet, but, well, you don't have many other options and your stomach demands to be appeased before you go back. You walk back to your table with your half-cold steak skewer and flip open your book to pick up where you last left off: -- _as a potential driving force, in that without the two poles of Shadow and Persona, the duality of yin and yang, theoretically one may end up motivationless and apathetic should one ever lose their shadow…_

You put the plate down beside your small pile of books. A kid is staring at you from the other side of _your_ table, sitting in a chair, PSP in his hands, and chewing his own steak skewer.

“Er, sorry,” you say automatically, although this is _your_ table; _you_ put _your_ books down here first to claim your place. “I can move,” your mouth keeps going. The food court is full of people chatting; a child spills his soda across a table as the mother drags him away, and a Junes employee in the corner cringes. Yours is the only table available and un-soda-fied. You grimace.

“Sorry, do you… mind if I sit here?”

He looks at you blankly. “No,” he says at length.

He _better_ not mind you sitting at your own table. “Thanks,” you mumble, putting your books back down. You resolve to eat your skewer as quickly as socially acceptable.

But the boy puts down his PSP, narrowing his large, round eyes. “…That’s a… Yasogami uniform, isn’t it?”

No, sitting at the same table isn't an invitation to talk; you have things to do. “This? Oh, well, I didn’t really have time to change after school...”

“Do you know Yukiko Amagi?”

He’s looking at you with those wide fish-eyes; you feel the urge to stand up and leave even as you sit up straighter. “She’s in the grade above me. Sorry.” You reach immediately for your steak skewer. If you put food in your mouth, you can't hold a conversation. 

"With her sudden illness, she's become the talk of the town. People won't shut up about her and her crummy old inn, like they gave a damn before they thought she was dying,” he says. His eyes still won’t move from your face, like he’s staring you down. 

There’s really no need for a staring contest; you blinked in like the first three seconds. And besides--"I guess," you say, but no more than that--you might just  _agree_ with him. Hell if he's gonna make you talk about Yukiko and Chie, though.

“But there’s also the Amagi Challenge,” he continues.

No, stop talking about Yukiko. “The… what?”

“The Amagi Challenge?””

You can’t help your pained expression. “Sorry, I’m new to town...”                                                           

His eyes light up; he leans forward, hunched, but with more intent than you’d have expected from a kid wasting his life in a video game. “It’s pretty widely known,” he says, with barely restrained glee, “that Yukiko Amagi’s never had a boyfriend. Has never even dated.”

“Are you joking?” you say. Is this what people talk about? Do they really have nothing better to do? Still, even with her duty to the inn— “You’d think she’d have at least tried it. She’s the prettiest girl in Yasogami.”

“Exactly!” says the boy, almost vehemently. You feel yourself beginning to lean backwards. “She _has_ to be doing it on purpose—girls do that, right? Play hard to get? That’s the Amagi Challenge: the first person she says yes to wins.”

She’s in the _hospital_ , her relationship with her best friend is shattered, her inn is getting slammed in the tabloids, and people are concerned with being the first to take her dating virginity. Is this how people really are, outside of classrooms and workspaces? Life is better on a class ranking sheet. At length, you manage to say: “Sounds like… fun.”

The boy’s eyes narrow, and his protruding lips press themselves white. “It’s not a game to me.”

“Ah…” You laugh nervously, and throw a glance at the lone Junes employee, catching her gaze. “I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘game’.”

“Nothing is ever a game,” the boy says, voice low. His hands clench into fists.

“Okay, okay, you definitely mean business!” You jerk to your feet to escape, but then he’s on his feet too, hunching his chubby shoulders over the table. You hope nobody’s staring. “You’re definitely going to attempt the Amagi Challenge. Sounds like you’re serious. She must mean a lot to you. So, uh—good luck!”

 “If I could date Yukiko Amagi, that would mean _everything_ to me,” the boy says fervently.

“Yeah, she’s pretty hot,” you say shakily, catching the employee’s gaze again. Her eyes linger when you look away.

“No, it’s not—“ The boy runs his hand through his hair, then grabs some and pulls fiercely. You take a physical step back. “It’s that everyone _knows_ she’s hot—she’s hot, and smart, and rich as hell, and quiet, and probably cooks like a dream with a nice, soft giggle—and _everyone knows_. Don’t you get it?”

You stop. “If… that’s the way you want to play the game,” you say.

His hand slams on the table. You squeak. “It’s not a _game_.”

“Well, then we, uh, have to agree to disagree, I suppose,” you hear yourself say. “Either everything’s a game, or well, nothing is. Student rankings, making friends, applying for jobs—it’s all about doing the right thing at the right time, keeping your variables in perfect condition to ensure the odds in your favor. In either case, it’s only a matter of scale, isn’t it? You can say the littlest things are games and the bigger things aren’t,” you explain, as if in a dream, “but it all works the same. You just have more to gain and more to lose and more fun, right?”

He frowns. “That’s not how it works.”

 You’re not arguing. “Well, okay—“

“Hard work is bullshit,” he snaps. “The only way you accomplish anything is with _power_.”

“That’s—“

“Excuse me?”

The Junes employee folds her hands demurely in front of her, but nonetheless fixes the boy with a stare as clear and grey as the winter sky. “Is there a problem I may assist with?” she asks.

A couple of teenage girls whisper behind their hands, glancing at the boy and giggling, while others avert their gazes. You lean back even further in hopes they’ll label you the victim. The boy scowls, but shrinks. The employee inclines her head.

“No problem,” the boy mumbles. He snatches his PSP from the table and stalks away through the food court, vanishing behind the sliding doors. People continue to look away, but at least nobody seems to be looking away from _you_. Thank god.

“I’m sorry not stepping in earlier,” the employee says, bowing slightly. “I should have intervened.”

“No, I’m sorry for the disturbance,” you mumble.

“Is there anything we can offer you? A refund on your meal?”

“No, no, you’re too kind. It’s okay.” You collect your books clumsily, abandoning your cold steak skewer. “Was just leaving, anyway.”

She nods, and collects your plate. “Then—“

She stiffens. Half a second later, Yosuke rounds a corner and, spotting her, calls from across the food court, “Saki-senpai!”

She smiles at you, almost apologetically, and turns. “Hana-chan,” she says, a teasing lilt in her tone. “Aren’t you on shelving duty today?”

“I heard about the guy at the food court who was yelling—“ He pulls up beside you and looks at you, bewildered. “Whoa, Adachi-kun! I didn’t expect to see you here. I would have thought you’d be in a library somewhere—though I guess you’ve just brought it with you.”

“Yes, a guy yelling at the foot court,” she repeats, smiling slightly.

Yosuke flushes. “I was worried. And you’ve looked pretty beat all day.”

“He’s gone,” she assures him. “Do you two… know each other?”

“Oh! Yeah, he’s the grade below me; he knows, er, Chie Satonaka and Amagi-san.” He smiles twitches at their names, eyes flickering down before he smiles wider and harder. “Adachi-kun, this is Saki Konishi; Saki-senpai, Adachi-kun. He’s the new transfer student from the city.”

“A city boy like Hana-chan? Pleased to meet you,” Konishi says. Her smile, while not wide or even particularly touching her eyes, is still kind. “I’m glad to see Hana-chan making friends—male friends, as it is.”

“Senpai,” Yosuke laughs, a little uneasy. “That’s—c’mon, that’s not necessarily true.”

“Please take care of him,” she tells you gently. “Excuse me, I’ll get rid of this plate for you. See you later, Hana-chan.”

“See you!” Yosuke says to her retreating back. She doesn't turn.

The two of you stand in silence. In fact, Yosuke practically ignores you in favor of watching Konishi dump cold meat into a trash can. Nobody, you despair, thinks with anything but their dicks around here.

“Well, you’re very lucky, senpai!” you say with false cheer, and wave goodbye.

He jumps, like a guilty child. “Wh-What do you mean?”

“Well, I thought, with the way you two were acting…”

Yosuke’s cheeks color furiously. “I-I have no idea what you're talking about!”

“Oh, so it's like that! Then, ah, good luck. Pretend I didn't say anything. Sorry for presuming.” You turn to leave (again).

But he stops you again: “No, wait—“ and scratches the back of his neck. “Am I… that obvious?”

Supremely. But there’s no sense in spoiling your own fun. “Maybe a little,” you say. “She seems nice.”

“She is,” Yosuke says, with fervor uncomfortably close to the PSP boy’s vehemence. “She’s really great, she works so hard, and she’s always cheerful. She’s just… really great.”

“Good for you,” you say. You shift your books noticeably in your arms, hoping he’ll take the hint. “Really, good luck. You’ll need it.”

“Hey! Whaddaya mean, ‘I’ll need it’?”

You laugh nervously. “Well, I mean…” and for the lack of better words, you gesture to… all of him.

“So I’m not in the best shape!” Yosuke squawks. “But I'm not, like, fat or anything; and I’m fast…”

(“Fast” is usually not the trait a girl’s looking for, you almost say. Good thing you don’t.)

“…and like you have room to talk! You're smaller than I am!”

“I’m just a student looking for a good college, not a girlfriend,” you reply. “A senpai, no less.”

Yosuke looks away like a bashful puppy, but there’s real, jagged strain in the tension around his eyes. “W-Well, enough about me,” he says, almost brusquely. “Can I talk to you for a second? I’m off my shift in literally three minutes, but I’ve been texting you all day and it’s telling me you’re out of service…”

“ _Texting_ me?” Somebody actually texted you? “Where did you get my number?”

“Squeezed Narukami-sensei for it. Said you’d given it to me earlier but I forgot it. C’mon, dude, I’ll buy you another skewer,” he says, “just we gotta talk about Chie.”

Something drops in your stomach. “I… Do we have to?”

He looks at you strangely. “Uh. _Yes_?”

“Well, I mean, is there, you know, really anything to say? It’s all pretty self-explanatory—“

“Just a few minutes—and I’ve figured out a few things you might wanna hear, too,” he insists, mouth unsmiling. “I’ll go pick up those steak skewers.”

A few girls nearby watch Yosuke go and whisper behind their hands. You sink back into your chair. The metal is hard and unforgiving.

At the very least, though, you _are_ hungry, and the food gives you something to look at other than Yosuke. “I’ve been thinking about what you’ve said about the fog on the other side,” Yosuke starts, and pulls out an honest-to-god notebook, flips to a clean page, and begins drawing a timeline of events. He talks fast but accurately, like a neatly clipped speech: “There’s fog on the other side, but there’s also a periodic fog that happens in Inaba, too, right? I asked around, did some research—apparently, Inaba’s a point of occasional scientific interest now and again, because nobody really knows where the fog comes from. It’s one of those things that people can’t explain, but they don’t think too hard about it because it’s not like the fog actually does anything, and the weather channel predicts the fog accurately enough anyway because it only comes after several days of rain. I didn’t think twice about it either when I moved here. But,” he says, leaning closer, “I realized that both bodies appeared on foggy days. The news reporter and the enka singer didn’t just disappear, and then reappear at a set time later; they only reappeared when the _fog_ appeared. You know what I mean?”

You lean over the notebook as well. Well, you’ll be damned. Yosuke put something together. Why didn't you do that yourself? “You mean that the fog in Inaba is related to the TV world—like a connection between the two sides?”

“Too little information; it’s all speculation,” says Yosuke, rather briskly. You blink at him in surprise. “I don’t know how it works, but from these two data points, that’s the theory—people who end up in the TV world don’t show up dead on our side until the fog creeps over to our side.”

And that’s when you realize what he reminds you of—he’s talking like a salesman making a pitch. You smile involuntarily; he smiles back seemingly on reflex. Isn’t that a nice feeling, to hold judgment? “When’s the next forecast for fog?” you say.

“It’s going to rain tomorrow and the day after that, and usually after multiple days of rain there’ll be fog,” Yosuke replies promptly. Damn, he’s prepared. You sit a little more comfortably in your chair.

But then you think that through—and wince, just a bit. “Then… if Chie-senpai wasn’t going to be in danger until three days from now…”

Yosuke grimaces, at least with sympathy. “Yeah… but you couldn’t have known that. You and Yukiko probably thought that she could die at any moment.”

Yes, he’s right. You didn’t know. There was nothing you could have done at the time. Besides, it was Yukiko herself who made the choice to keep going; she knew her own strength was failing her. You really couldn’t have known.

“And y’know, it’s just speculation,” Yosuke continues, as if that’ll soften the blow. It does, a little; and then he asks: “Have you seen Chie? She just got released from questioning, but she’s not answering my texts.”

“No,” you say, ducking your head. “I… don’t have her number.”

“Well, I suppose you’ll get it eventually—we’re sort of in this together, now,” Yosuke continues. “We should all go see Yukiko together, when she gets out of intensive care. I bet she’d like that.”

You keep your eyes fixed on your steak skewer. “Ah, yeah…” you say, vaguely.

“And one more thing…”

You don’t quite wince, but you’d like to. The girls nearby giggle louder, and you catch a whisper of “Junes” and “manager”; Yosuke pauses, but they stand and leave with their drinks. Yosuke continues:

“You’ve heard about the Midnight Channel, right? I think Chie mentioned it once.”

“That thing?” you say. “Yeah, but I’ve never tried it.”

“A few days before Chie disappeared,” Yosuke says, “I heard Ichijio-kun saying that he though he saw Chie on the Midnight Channel. He sounded pretty psyched about it, honestly, and I sort of dismissed it because it’s not like he’s going to be the most reliable witness in this situation, but—“

“That’s right!” you exclaim, accidentally cutting him off, and clap your hands over your mouth. “Oh, sorry, but… I just remembered that Yukiko said she saw the same thing on the Midnight Channel.”

“So it _is_ connected,” says Yosuke, grinning with almost triumph. “And the thing is that they saw Chie on the Midnight Channel _before_ she was kidnapped, so…”

“…It’s a forewarning?”

Yosuke flips his notebook upside down to face you. A spiderweb of thought processes connects three names: Misuzu Hiiragi, Mayumi Yamano, and Chie Satonaka, like something right out of a crime show. “They haven’t caught the murderer yet, have they?” Yosuke says, looking proud of his little artwork. “And we know from Chie’s kidnapping that he’s not gonna stop. But if our theory about the Midnight Channel is correct—we might have a way of knowing who’s going to be kidnapped _before_ they’re kidnapped, don’t we?”

The first thing you think is: _That’s going to be a lot of work._ And, well, it’s a valid concern—you have tests to study for, grades to keep up… Your mother chewed you out this very morning about it. And for what? A chance to play hero? For a little taste of power? You have a duty to do what’s best for yourself and your future. Nobody’s going to help you succeed in the things that count but yourself and your hard work and your test grades. If colleges ever cared about extra-curriculars, the one that definitely would not count on a college application would be the one called “Rescuing People Thrown Into a TV From Their Repressed Emotions.”

“It’s still all theory,” you say. Yosuke’s face falls a little. “I mean, if it happens again—then we’ll cross that bridge when we get there, right? No sense in worrying about it now.”

“…I guess so,” he says.

You hesitate, fiddling with your empty skewer stick—but there’s nothing wrong with theory, nothing wrong with just talking about it. “Well, I was doing a bit of my own research, poking around the library,” you begin, “and I found something that fits with what we saw in the TV…”

Yosuke’s face brightens. It’s not really succumbing to temptation, you think, if it’s just _theory_.

And you _can_ finish the homework you were gonna do later tonight—you’ll have to stay up later than usual, but you can do it. And you’ve already done a bunch earlier. And you’re talking about psychology; you’re learning loads just by telling Yosuke about it. It’s allowed, you tell yourself when Yosuke jumps out and excuses himself for a second, as long as you don’t make a habit of it. And you won’t. And it’s _educational_.

It’s almost evening, you realize, and the food court is beginning to empty out. When did it get so dark? You hadn’t even noticed. You _had_ spent quite a bit of time on your homework before that incident with the guy who stole your table, but it hadn’t been this late—

“I’m back!” Yosuke says loudly, and you jump, and then almost shriek at the pair of _knives_ he’s holding. “So I was thinking—“

“Are you _crazy_?” you hiss in your loudest whisper. “Senpai, put those away!”

“They’re not even sharpened,” Yosuke says; “I was just suggesting that in theory, if it ever happens again—“

“ _Senpai_ —“

“Yosuke Hanamura, what are you _doing_?”

You want to crawl under the table. Yu Narukami is staring at you, along with the few other people at the food court, holding a bag of pedigree cat food and instant noodles. Oh god, he’s a _cop_ , you’re gonna get arrested—

“Oh, hey, Narukami-sensei!” Yosuke says brightly, waving one hand that’s still full of knife. “I was showing Adachi-kun these old products that we discontinued a while ago—“

Narukami drags his groceries across the food court and grabs the katana by the unsharpened blade. “For the sake of my sanity, Hanamura-kun, _please_ ,” he snaps, “do not wave around weapons in public at night while there’s a _murder investigation_ going on.” And he pulls the weapon free of Yosuke’s grip, holding his other hand out for the aikuchi.

“We didn’t mean anything by it—“

“The aikuchi,” says Narukami flatly.

Yosuke swallows hard and, looking mortified, hands over the other weapon.

Narukami doesn’t have the sheaths, or even any place to put them out of sight, so he only put them on a nearby table and stands between you two and the weapons, like you’re going to make a lunge for it. If looks could kill, there’d be a physical blast radius around him and the line of his pressured smile. “Narukami-sensei, I swear, this wasn’t my idea at all,” you plead.

Narukami takes a deep breath, and then another. He manages a tight smile. “I don’t know if I _want_ to know what the idea behind this was,” he admits, _almost_ amiably. “But _please_ —there’s an ongoing murder investigation, and most of the police department and the community are on edge right now. You know that Dojima-san would have me arrest you both, right?”

That’d go on your permanent record. “Narukami-sensei, I can explain--!” you say, but he waves his hand.

“It’s okay, I remember what being a teenaged boy was like,” he says, and sighs. (Please, he can’t be older than twenty-seven.) “I’ll let it slide,” he says, “but just… don’t do that again, okay? Other guys on the police force won’t be so lenient. Everyone’s on edge.”

“Thank you,” you say fervently.

“Guess I really wasn’t thinking,” admits Yosuke, smiling nervously.

Narukami’s smile sits a little more comfortably on his face. “I suppose that’s only expected.”

“Hey!”

“And you should really text me your availability for an English lesson,” says Narukami, picking his groceries back up, “so you don’t panic over your midterms again.”

“I will! I’m gonna check my calendar tonight!”

“Like you did last week. I also want my cat food back. Nanako-chan’s been asking.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get on it,” Yosuke mumbles, looking distinctly like a ruffled cat.

Narukami laughs at that, short but clear. “There’d be no need to be so embarrassed over the things you haven’t done if you’d do them,” he says. “All you have to do is be a little more organized.”

“I am organized! I have this nifty notebook right here! In legible handwriting and everything!” Yosuke protests, waving said notebook.

“Oh, really? About what?”

You freeze. Yosuke freezes. “Uh,” he says.

“Indexing your terrible pick-up lines doesn’t count,” Narukami says.

Yosuke laughs, but tucks his notebook away quickly in his jacket. “Yeah, right, you wish,” he mumbles.

Narukami’s eyes linger on the outline of the notebook in Yosuke’s pocket. “I have to tutor Shu-kun tonight,” he says. “My apologies for my hasty exit. I’ll be in touch about your next lesson, Adachi-kun. And I’m taking these,” he says, swiping the weapons with his other hand.

“Those are really mine, though!”

“And now they’re the trash can’s,” Narukami says, and dumps them both in the garbage. “Please, Hanamura-kun, Adachi-kun,” he says, quite plaintively, “stay out of trouble.”

“Yes, Sensei,” you say dutifully.

He studies you both hard. “You know I’d hate for you to be in trouble,” he says, slowly, with emphasis on every word.

“We’ll stay out of it, we promise,” Yosuke mumbles.

“Please,” he says, and, “Have a good evening.” And with that, Narukami hoists his bag of cat food higher and walks around the corner, digging his car keys out of his pocket as he goes. Yosuke groans and buries his head in his arms.

“Now I gotta dig those out of the trash,” Yosuke complains.

“At least he didn’t confiscate them,” you say. At least he didn’t _arrest you both, Jesus Christ_.

Yosuke turns his head, so you can see one eye and half his frown. “…I know I was really excited about potentially being able to help any future kidnapping victims,” he says, “but if that means I have to lie to people I care about…”

You can’t help frowning yourself. Like lying is anything to be worried about? The both of you have just gone over the concept of Shadows and Personas, as if that’s anything but, at its core, the idea of lying to not only everyone around you but _yourself_ merely by the fact of your existence. Of all harmless things to be worried over. “Well, if you think he’d believe you, you can go ahead and tell him about the TV world,” you offer.

He sits up straight. “No way, dude. He’d tell me to save it for my big debut as a fantasy writer.”

You sigh facetiously. “Oh, well. I guess there’s nothing to be done about it, then.”

“Yeah. It just kind of sucks,” he says. He buries his face back in his arms. “Sorry for complaining.”

Something in your gut churns unpleasantly, seeing Yosuke lying facedown on the food court table. You look around at the evening sky, feeling like you’re in second grade and looking for test answers on the classroom ceiling, but to no avail. “Well, it’s not all bad,” you say, tentatively. “I mean… hey, I’ll show you something cool.”

He looks up, then grins a little. Your gut settles. “Like what?” he says. “Wait, lemme dig my stuff back out of the trash.”

You’re glad when he doesn’t try to cajole you into helping. You’re not gonna do it.

You take him and his smelly weapons to the electronics department of Junes, only an hour before Junes closes. “I can take people in with me if I’m touching them,” you explain. “It’s how Yukiko got in. Do you mind if I…?”

You take his shoulder sleeve delicately and lead him to the widescreen TV. “Whoa, wait,” Yosuke yelps when you’ve got one hand in, “didn’t we just agree it’s incredibly dangerous in there?!”

“Trust me. I’ve figured a few things out,” you say, delighted, before you drag him straight into free-fall.

Yosuke yells the whole way down, and lands no more gracefully. You’re still in awe yourself that you haven’t broken bones on this fall yet. Yosuke groans, pushing himself up on his hands and slipping on your papers. “What the—“ he starts, and looks twice. “Is this your science homework?”

“I was doing homework in here earlier,” you say brightly. “It’s way quieter in here than the library. Of course it is, there’s nobody here.”

“There’s monsters here!”

“No,” you say, “they never enter this area with the TV stack. They might spot you, but they won’t enter this area.”

“No kidding?” says Yosuke, almost admiringly. You can’t help your smile. “What about the headache?”

You shrug. “You get used to it.”

He looks at you quizzically, like what you’ve said just makes no sense. “Weren’t we just talking earlier about how this place’s fog kind of… slowly kills you?”

“I won’t be here that long,” you protest. “Only a few hours of solitude. No people around, nobody bugging you, nobody can even reach you by cell phone…”

Yosuke looks out towards the fog. Slowly, in increments, he begins to nod. “Yeah,” he says at last. “Yeah, I get what you mean.”

You grin in relief. Carefully, Yosuke smiles back.

“Hey, I don’t know if anyone else is going to get kidnapped,” Yosuke says abruptly, “or even if our theories are right. But… can you promise me, that if it _does_ happen, you’ll bring me along on any rescue mission?”

You hesitate. “C’mon, man,” Yosuke says, a little quicker. “I figured out just as much as you about this place and I wasn’t even here. I have some brains, don’t I? I can be useful.”

“You don’t have a Persona, and it’s kind of dangerous in here…”

“Neither do you,” he fires back. You bite your bottom lip. “And I have those weapons. I’ll be okay. But I can’t just watch while people I know put their lives at stake to help other people. I can’t just stand by.”

You hesitate again.

“It’s still just theory,” you say.

“In theory,” he says.

You scratch the back of your head. “…Well, uh, then, in theory,” you say. “In theory, if someone else is kidnapped… I’ll tell you.”

Yosuke breathes what sounds like a sigh of relief. “Thanks, man,” he says, and holds out his hand. “I won’t let you down.”

You take his hand. You’ve let him squirm for long enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the great thing about writing Yosuke, Adachi, and Mitsuo Kubo all in the same chapter is that it's like a nice, smooth, poetic gradient of trash.


	8. Terms and Conditions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't owe you shit.

_AFTER SCHOOL_

Two weeks later—two blissful weeks of school, studying, and tests—a politician named Taro Namatame disappears, Yukiko is released from the hospital, the Midnight Channel's broadcasting, Chie responds to your texts ("k"), Yosuke won't stop calling you every three minutes, and Narukami skips out on your lesson _again_.

"He dropped his cell phone in Daddy's coffee," Nanako explains from your front door, and adds, as an afterthought, “On accident,” which is not an invalid correction concerning the man who almost climbed out your window. Your phone goes off in your pocket _again_. "He said he was gonna call you from the station phone, but I thought you'd like to know so you aren't wondering if he's late."

"...Thanks," you say.

"Tohru? Is that your tutor?" your mother calls. You wince. "What're you standing out by the front door for?"

"Uhh," you say.

"Adachi-san?" Nanako says, from around your waist. "Big Bro can't come today! I came to tell you."

Your mother materializes around the corner. Her eyebrows are dangerously high. "Oh," she says. "Really?"

Nanako steps back. Your phone falls silent.

Your mother hesitates. “Oh, that's no problem, I suppose,” she says tonelessly. “Would you like to come in, Nanako-chan? I just bought some candy from Junes.”

Nanako looks like someone has simultaneously given her a brand new balloon and popped the one she already had. She wavers on the doorstep and her eyes dart towards you. “No, thank you,” she says, slowly.

“Oh,” your mother says. “Well.”

Cautiously, Nanako turns her tiny face upwards. “Please let me meet Teddie-kun again,” Nanako whispers.

Internally, you sigh. “I'm sure he’ll be beary pleased to see you,” you whisper back.

She smiles with bright delight. “Have a good night!” she says, and waves. Your mother waves in return, even after you’ve closed the door. She stands there, hand still held out, silent.

“I'm gonna finish my homework,” you say carefully.

“Good,” she says, and lowers her arm.

You retreat to your room and collapse on the floor. You take a large breath in, and let a large breath out. Center yourself. Stability. Calm.

Your phone shrills from your pocket. You consider dropping it in your mother’s coffee.

But you fire a text off to Yosuke instead, making up something about a faulty battery and your mother entertaining guests, and shut it off. You encircle yourself with your textbooks, right there on the floor, and flip them all open, splaying their innards of information. For tonight, it's just you and your homework. What you understand. What you've been prepared to do. You pull up the first math problem, and without any thought at all, let the well-maintained cogs of your brain do the rest.

You work until five AM, when you see the beginnings of the sunrise. Then you shut your blinds and close your eyes. Morning, you know, isn't as kind as the night.

***

_LUNCH_

“Taro Namatame was the main police suspect,” Yosuke says, pacing across the school roof, “but that can't be right--he's in the TV, too. Whoever the original killer was, now they want him dead.”

Yosuke brought a terrible tabloid that covered the police’s search for “fugitive politician Taro Namatame,” and it's honestly one of the worst-written article you've ever read. Sensationalized, overdone, factually incorrect—you end up reading every word. “Whoa, what _is_ that thing on his forehead?” you say, and flip a page. “The picture’s really grainy. Do you think they’ll talk about it on tonight’s news?”

“Focus, Adachi-kun! We gotta figure out why Taro Namatame’s on the killer’s list!”

You make a face. “That doesn't make any sense. I mean—if I was the killer, I’d keep the investigation running in circles around dead ends for as long as I could. That’d be the smart thing to do, right?”

“Hey, it's not like I've spent time contemplating how to kill a dude! As it is, I can't even begin to comprehend how somebody could even _think_ of it.” He pauses. “And honestly? I’d rather not even go there.”

“If you don't wanna get your hands dirty, that puts us at a disadvantage…”

You peer down at the diagram that Yosuke’s drawn, pushing your glasses up your nose. Four kidnapping victims so far; the first two, clearly related and obviously incriminating for Namatame. It makes sense: affair went sour, he killed his mistress, then his wife. It's with Chie that things get weird, because the only connection Chie has ever had to the last two victims is that she got Misuzu Hiiragi’s autograph once for her mother, and that's a ridiculous stretch to connect the dots. You scribble out the lines connecting Chie and the enka singer. One variable down. Think, Tohru! There’s an answer to every math problem; it's impossible for the numbers to not equal something. Something happened to cause these deaths, the answer is _there_ , and you’re gonna find it.

“You know what we _can_ do, right?” Yosuke says.

Maybe you can rewrite Yosuke’s shitty web diagram as a neat formula. Doesn't hurt to restate the problem, right? Variable Y for Yamano, variable H for Hiiragi, variable C for…

“We gotta go rescue him. Namatame’s not dead yet, but he will be when it rains.”

You stop writing.

“W-Well,” you start, having no idea what you're about to say. You try again. “Senpai, it's—incredibly dangerous in there. You know that, right?”

“Which is why we gotta rescue Namatame,” he replies. "You guys managed to rescue Chie, so..."

“W… What, are you serious?” you say, looking up. “Taro Namatame is currently the most likely murderer!”

“But now we know he’s not because he’s about to _be_ murdered.”

You look down at the diagram again. Goddammit, it's so neat on paper. You were going to make it even neater by cleaning up Yosuke’s shitty handwriting, too. “Senpai, the last trip into the TV…”

“I know,” says Yosuke, “it didn't go so well…”

The tabloid paper rips under your hands. “Didn’t _go so well_?”

Yosuke looks at you with alarm. You yelp and hurriedly shove the paper back into place, but the tear remains. “Sorry, Senpai, but I… okay, it didn't go so well. And honestly, going back for seconds is a _bad_ idea! Bad, bad idea! I told Yukiko-senpai before we—before—that we should tell the police, and I still think we should. I _really_ think we should.”

“Yeah, but,” says Yosuke, “firstly, they won't believe us at all. Secondly, if they do, then it'll probably be because they _are_ the murderer. Because whoever the murderer is obviously has the same abilities you do. We’ll just tip them off! Inaba’s a small place. We can't afford to trust too many people, right?”

Ugh—he’s right, damn him. “If you're going to go by that stringent logic, I have no idea if you're the murderer, either," you say. "You could be helping them out, even.”

“I would never!” Yosuke says, looking scandalized. “Adachi-kun!”

You laugh weakly. “Just joking,” you say. And you were, but the barb was intended. Screw him and his logic.

“Not funny, dude,” he mutters. He sits down next to you and pulls out his cell phone. “But my proposal still stands. We have the ability, so we have the responsibility. Yukiko-san’s out of the hospital, Chie’s attending school again—we should talk to them, get something coordinated.”

“The TV world…” you begin.

He nods sympathetically. “This time, though, we’ll be more prepared.”

You grip his notebook tightly. He has no idea what it's like, to see humanity at its worst in people you know. To see a lifetime’s worth of friendship crushed by truth. No, you never believed there was anything to be crushed, anyway. Friendship and bonds can't transcend people’s worth to each other. You knew people were all ugly inside. You always knew.

“So let’s organize something, get some people together, call in the cavalry. We’re going to need as many people as we can if we’re going to do anything about this,” Yosuke says. “I’ll text Chie and see if we can talk to her after school if you’ll call the Amagi inn?”

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

Chie doesn't stop walking until Yosuke stands right in her way, and then, only then, does she pretend she’s just seen you. “Oh! Hey!” she says, with overly loud cheer. “I uh, haven't see you guys in a while!”

“Chie, we’re gonna head over to the Amagi inn,” says Yosuke. “You've seen the news and the Midnight Channel, right?”

“Haha, yeah, about that,” says Chie, looking away. “Um, I'm… I've got something to do this afternoon! Sorry, I gotta dash. Parents, right?”

Yosuke moves left as she moves right. “Yukiko-san’s been released from the hospital,” he presses. “Just really fast—we can drop by and see her.”

Chie meets your eyes for a second, and you both look away.

“Well, I mean,” she stammers. “She… was in a closed ward in the hospital so the tabloids couldn't follow her, right? So I… haven't seen much of her lately.”

“Yeah, it took me like, forever for the hospital to tell me about the approved visitors list, and forever for her to actually add me,” Yosuke sighs. “And even then I couldn't really go because it'd be weird, you know? Just me and her in a room?”

Chie looks down.

“She didn't…” she says, and stops. Visibly swallows. “She didn't add me to the list.”

Nobody moves.

“…Well, maybe she… forgot,” says Yosuke.

Chie gives him a look that could melt steel, except her bottom lip is trembling, and when she moves to leave Yosuke doesn't stop her. “You're always so—inconsiderate,” she mumbles, and breaks out into a headlong sprint through Yasogami’s front gates.

Yosuke groans.

“Nice one, Senpai,” you say.

***

But when you get there, Chie is standing outside the Amagi inn, fiddling with her sports jacket and scuffing the ground. Her eyes are, thankfully, not red.

“I, um, really meant to give you this earlier, but I forgot,” she says, and laughs weakly. “Silly me, huh?”

She pulls out a pair of yellow glasses from her jacket pocket. “When I was kidnapped,” she explains, “I woke up with no idea how I’d gotten there. The last thing I remember was—geez, probably just watching some martial arts movie or another, but I'm not even sure I was doing that. Anyway, I woke up in the fog and I was wearing these.”

“Glasses?” Yosuke wonders aloud, as you gingerly take them from her.

“They really help with the fog,” she says. “Couldn't see a thing without them, but when you wear them, they even help a bit with the headache. You guys should try it if you go back in. I dunno how Adachi-kun’s gonna wear it, though; he already had to wear his own glasses, haha!” She takes a deep breath, like she’d gotten a weight off her chest, but her smile is no less heavy. “Anyway! That's my, uh, contribution, so if Yukiko—uh, if you guys are going back into the TV, you can use that. I really gotta take care of that, um, thing. For my parents. Now.”

“Thanks, Chie,” says Yosuke. “And um… feel... better soon?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles. She meets your eyes, again; and again you both look away. “Good luck.”

“Good luck with your thing for your parents,” you say with cheer on par with Chie’s. You appreciate the pain in her eyes when she thanks you for luck for a task that doesn't exist; but you don't look for long. It’s just not worth it.

***

The receptionist at the inn actually doesn't believe that you're not news journalists in disguise, which means either she's being overly paranoid, or that news journalists have actually attempted to use high school students to extract an interview out of Yukiko. You have an irritated feeling which one is more likely; but regardless, it's still a supreme pain in the ass that it takes Yosuke almost fifteen minutes to convince her to take a picture of you two, send the picture upstairs to Yukiko with a maid, and get the answer from Yukiko herself if she knew the "two suspicious young males who won't leave." The maid reports back that Yukiko does, at which point the receptionist and the maid spend another five minutes whispering back and forth behind their hands if Yukiko isn't mistaken about if Yukiko knows you two.

As you approach the half-hour mark, Yosuke peers over your shoulder. "What're you doing? Texting somebody?"

"I took a picture of my math homework with my phone."

"You're solving math problems,” he says in disbelief.

"Well, it's not like the inn's lobby TV is showing anything interesting…"

Yosuke checks the clock for the fifth time that minute. "Dude," he sighs. "You're making me look bad."

In the end, a maid grudgingly leads you to a guest bedroom. "Although she's been released from the hospital, she's been resting here during the day," she tells you sternly. "Please be respectful." And then she opens the door, ushers the two of you in, and shuts it behind you.

The lights are off. There's light outside, but the sun's coming from the wrong angle to shine any light directly through the window. An empty futon is rolled out on one side, a small TV mounted on the wall, and a tray of uneaten food on a table. Both you and Yosuke freeze. It is utterly silent.

Then Yukiko stands from the chair, scaring the bejeezus out of you; she'd been so unmoving you hadn't noticed her at all. She closes her book and gives the tiniest of bows. "I'm sorry about that," she says, looking embarrassed. "My mother has become very concerned about the tabloids. I hope they didn't give you too much trouble. Please, sit," she says, pulling cushions out from a cabinet and placing them around the table.

She's not in her uniform, but her manners are impeccable. "Wow, this is a nice place," says Yosuke. "I've never really been in one of the inn's rooms before."

"I can only work a few shifts now," says Yukiko. "The doctor says I shouldn't strain myself, but I feel fine. They're being unnecessarily worried, I think, because they don't know what's wrong with me."

" _Is_ there something wrong?" you blurt out.

Her eyes don't quite focus on your face, and she looks down to fiddle with her book. "Nothing more than can be expected from the... situation," she concedes.

"I should have called the ambulance earlier," says Yosuke, looking down.

"No, no, that's not what I meant. I am extremely thankful you called the ambulance. You saved my life, Yosuke-kun," she says, quite earnestly. "They're just not... sure what caused that condition in the first place, and they're being overly cautious. I'm not a doctor myself so I suppose I shouldn't presume, but it’s my personal hunch that everything that will recover has already done so."

She hesitates, then slides the book out of sight. _Oedipus,_ you read as it vanishes.You look up, trying to catch her gaze.

Yosuke frowns. "Are you sure you shouldn't be resting?"

"Um, I really do feel fine. Thank you."

Yosuke hesitates, but now Yukiko’s fidgeting with vague discomfort. "If you're sure," he concedes. "Well, we think there might be someone else inside the TV..."

He gives her a quick rundown of what you both discussed at the food court a few weeks ago; Yukiko listens quietly and attentively, with her face pointed straight towards Yosuke, but something nags at you, in the back of your mind. She nods politely, and her eyes go up and down with her head. "I see," she says. "And we have the ability to help Namatame because we have Personas..."

"Besides, who knows what we'll find out if we get the chance to talk to him, you know?" Yosuke's flipping through his notebook again. "Wait, we? More people than just you have a Persona?"

She hesitates. "Well, I... assumed that accepting one’s Shadow works the same for..."

Silence falls.

"If you're going back into the TV," you blurt out, "Chie-senpai wanted you to have these."

You hold out Chie's glasses. Yosuke opens his mouth like he wants to say something, and you look at him hard from the corner of your eye. God damn you, you think. Chie didn't give these to Yukiko, Chie gave them to all of you as a collective, to anyone who was going to back into the TV. He's a white liar, you think, if he goes along with this, and he's the one who threw a hissy fit over lying the other week. He should call you out on it. C'mon, do it. Please, Yosuke, _c'mon_.

"She couldn't make it today, but she says they help seeing through the fog in the TV," is all Yosuke says. _Fuck_ you, Yosuke, and your shitty hypocrisy.

Yukiko lifts the glasses from your palm carefully, unfolding them and squinting through the lenses. The light catches on the glass. The yellow color, quite honestly, looks terrible with her red school uniform.

Her lip twitches. She covers her mouth and looks away entirely, ducking her head. "...Senpai?" you ask.

A stifled noise escapes her. Shit, oh shit, the two of you have made two girls cry in one day—

Yukiko bursts out laughing.

And not, like, cute giggly laughter; full-out belly-laughter with gasping and hiccups and occasional shrieking. She _doubles over_ with laughter. Her eyes scrunch into tiny lines and for a whole second you're terrified she might choke and die on her own laughter and then Yosuke really will have called the ambulance for nothing. "Oh my _god_ , Chie," she manages, and collapses all over again, slapping her knee. She wipes at her eyes. She presses a hand to her mouth again like she could hold the sound in. She _snorts,_ and starts laughing all over again.

Yosuke looks just as terrified as you feel.

"Are you... _okay_?" he asks. Yukiko nods through her laughter. "I-Is this a side effect of your medication?!"

Yukiko slaps her knee harder, waving the glasses. "Chie gave me," she gasps out. "Two! Two eyes... A monocle! I could wear a monocle! Ohhh, my stomach!"

"What's happening," Yosuke whispers, horrified.

"Ahhhh," Yukiko sighs, and snickers again. "Ohh, but that was funny. That was really funny!"

You trade concerned looks with Yosuke. "It's... just a pair of glasses..."

"A pair!" she exclaims, and starts laughing all over again. "Can you imagine me with a monocle in the TV world? Or one half of a pair of glasses? Ahahahaha! It'd fall right off!"

"Senpai," you say. "When you say a pair..."

"Ahhhh, Chie's funny, but I don't need these, I don't think," she says, still giggling. "I only have one eye to see through anyway; it'd be wasted on me. You could wear them instead. Oh, but you're already wearing glasses! Yosuke-san, wouldn't Adachi-kun look great with two pairs of glasses? Ahahaha!"

"Yukiko-san!" says Yosuke loudly. Yukiko jumps, a few more giggles escaping her, looking confused. Yosuke opens his mouth, but hesitates, fear of his own words in his face: "Are you trying to say...?"

She looks at you two blankly, before realization hits. She glances from you to Yosuke and back, but her left eye--her left eye-- "Oh! Did you... did you not know? I could have sworn I told you..." She frowns. "...that I can't see on one side...?"

Nobody moves. Yukiko waits.

"...Oh," she says, belatedly, "I guess that wasn't the best way to tell you..."

" _What_?!" you yelp, just as Yosuke cries, "Why are you out of the hospital?!"

"I'm quite sure that everything that is going to recover already has," she says. "It's okay. I'm relearning how to pour tea with my new depth perception, but other than that it's really quite all right."

"You mean you've lost sight in one eye," Yosuke says, " _permanently_?"

"It can happen, apparently," she says, looking chastised, of all things. "I was dead for almost three minutes."

"I'm _so_ sorry," says Yosuke. He sounds faint. "If I'd called the ambulance earlier..."

"No, please, don't blame yourself. The situation was difficult for a lot of reasons, and it seems like I made a few mistakes myself about the danger Chie was in. I guess I should have told you in a better way, but I must have forgotten... Still," she says, smiling almost fondly at the yellow glasses, "that was nice of Chie. She must have known it'd make me laugh."

"I really don't think Chie _meant_ to do that," you say weakly. "I mean... _we_ didn't know, so I don't think she..."

She tilts her head. "What?"

"She..." You try to look like you're not attempting to swallow an entire lemon. "She never visited, so..."

"What?" she repeats.

Now _you're_ confused. "I thought you never added her to the approved visitors list?"

"I _what_?"

"Don't look at me!" you say, holding your hands out helplessly. "That's what she said!"

"Oh, no," says Yukiko, and puts the glasses down. "I... I _forgot_ to put her on the list."

Yosuke puts his head in his hands.

"The doctors say that my ability to retain information is a little shaky right now," she says, looking thoroughly embarrassed. "I thought it'd only be a problem for school and working at the inn, but I guess... even things like this..." She sighs. "And here I was worried for two whole weeks that she could walk in at any time for nothing..."

"Then you should tell her," you say. "She thinks you didn't want to see her."

"Ah," she says, like she's about to say more, but... doesn't. You wait, but she doesn't move.

"…Senpai?"

She smiles, almost apologetic. "Perhaps later. Yosuke-san, there isn't supposed to be any rain this week, is there?"

"Not if the forecast is right," he says. "Is everything...?"

But he doesn't finish his sentence, though she waits for him. "I'd quite like to speak with Namatame-san," she says. "Whoever the killer is, they threw my friend into the TV to die."

"Right. And I can't just stand back and let this happen when the police are clearly out of their depth and I know we have the chance to solve it," says Yosuke. "I have time after school tomorrow, and the electronics department of Junes should be empty."

"I'm not coming back to school until next week, so I'll do a morning shift and meet you in the afternoon," says Yukiko.

"Wow, what dedication! Good luck, Senpai!" you say, and flash a cheery thumbs up.

Their stupid faces when they turn towards you is an image you hope to take to your grave. Are they _shocked_? Maybe even betrayed? _Good._ Good for them and their heroic _bullshit_. Did they assume you’d be going with them on their suicide tour? Did they assume you feel some responsibility to solve the murders, some loyalty to these high school upperclassmen you met three weeks ago? You have better things to do. They have _no idea_ what they’re doing, none at all—

“Adachi-kun?” says Yosuke. It _still_ hasn’t sunk in for him, has it?

You clap your hands together and bow your head, the picture of regretful apology. “I’m sorry, but, it’s really no use for me to go, is there? I’m pretty bad at self-defense, I don’t have a Persona…”

Yukiko’s blank left eye stares right through you.

“…and I should really keep up with school; I’ve been falling behind a lot. I’d only hinder your progress, wouldn’t I? I’d hate to get in your way.”

“I haven’t fought a day in my life, and I don’t have a Persona, either,” says Yosuke. “It’s okay, we’re all in the same boat, trying to figure stuff out. No need to feel like you can’t come.”

You scrabble for another excuse. “My mother—“

“It’s okay, Yosuke,” says Yukiko. “If he doesn’t want to come, he doesn’t have to.”

“You don’t think that it’ll be better to have as many people as possible?”

She stands and smooths out her skirt. “He said so himself that he’d hinder our progress.”

“Thank you, Senpai,” you say.

She crosses the room and holds the door open. “Good luck with your homework.”

“…Right,” you say.

As you walk out of the inn, you try to breathe easier with relief, but it feels like trying suck air through a straw. It doesn’t matter. It was their own decisions that led you to this.

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

The next day, you see Yosuke get on his bike and pedal off in the direction of Junes, a pair of wrenches sticking out of his pants pocket. You hope that’s not his idea of a _weapon_. You head off yourself in the direction of your house, passing Chie by the gates, but you look only straight ahead.

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

You power through more homework than you need to, and ask Narukami for extra worksheets. The ones he sends you impress you, grudgingly—not only are they challenging, but you also suspect that he made them himself despite the murder investigation. You wonder if Yosuke ever gave him back his cat food. You wonder how the cat is doing. You think about going to the Samegawa to see if it’s still there, but contemplate first your bedroom door and your mother outside it, then your window and your lack of rope, and decide against it.

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

Yosuke comes to school with what looks like a faint, pink scar going up one side of his neck. You avoid him at lunch, in case he doesn’t ask to eat with you. You see Chie with half an eaten beef bowl on the roof, alone. You eat lunch at your desk, alone.

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

After Yukiko and Yosuke have gone into the TV for themselves, you slip through yourself. It really was a nice place to study, and then they went and ruined it. You stretch out on the painted target in the middle of the clearing and rest your head on your hands, drinking in fog and feeling your muscles unwind.

You let your eyes drift closed.

Who needed those guys anyway, huh? It was just a pain in the ass that they ruined your study spot.

“ _People invading my space_ …”

That’s what it was. Nobody would leave you alone to study.

“ _I don’t want him here_ …”

You don’t want anyone here. That’s why the TV world was perfect.

“ _Make him leave… He’s not my friend_ …”

You thought you’d driven Yosuke and Yukiko pretty far off with that show at the inn.

“ _He won’t make me less… alone_ …”

You open your eyes.

Your watch tells you two hours have passed. You can’t believe you fell asleep here; you fell asleep tired and woke up with a headache. Damn. You hurry out through the TV screen, feeling the back of your neck prickling.

***

_AFTER SCHOOL_

You feel so terrible you half suspect you have a migraine coming on, or this is finally some residual effect of the fog coming into play, and you decide to find the age-old cure of caffeine before you resign yourself to your house. You duck into the MOEL gas station and discover their instant coffee, which comes out of an insulated hot-water dispenser but could pass for melted ice cream anyway, and you’re left to microwave it yourself. You shouldn’t have expected any better from this hick town. You hand the gas station attendant your spare cash, careful to avoid her hands, and take a test sip. It was shit to begin with so the microwave did no damage, but it needs sugar, you decide, and hunt around for a packet.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” says the attendant, leaning against the cash register.

“No rain,” you agree, finding Splenda instead. “No fog.”

“The fog isn’t all that bad, is it?” says the attendant. Yeah, sure, whatever; not even the oldest residents here kid themselves that they like the fog. The attendant tilts her head. “So how’re you doing?”

“Just fine,” you mumble.

She smiles. “Oh, very good.”

***

_AFTER SCHOOL, THE NEXT DAY_

Yukiko hasn’t officially returned to school, which is why when you see her at the front gates, you know she’s here for you. You have five whole seconds to brace yourself.

“May I speak with you, Adachi-kun?” she says.

“Umm…” People are giving you and her weird looks, probably wondering about that Amagi Challenge; there’s no way that you can refuse in front of all these people. “Sure, Senpai,” you say, grudgingly. “Here?”

“Let’s go to the Junes food court,” she says, and leads the way. Ohh, boy. Are you in for some shit or what?

The way there is entirely silent. The food court, when you arrive, is entirely empty. She sits you down at a two-person table and excuses herself for a moment to buy a fruit milk so you won’t be chased out for loitering; you consider making a break for it, but she’s back before you can make up your mind. Oh, joy. Nothing for it.

“How’s the investigation going?” you ask. Seems like appropriate small talk.

Unlike small talk, she gives you a real answer: “We need more firepower. Rain is coming up in several days, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make our way through the monsters. Or Shadows, as we’ve begun to call them.”

Makes sense. Yosuke probably got the idea from what you told him in this very food court a few weeks ago. “Well, sorry to hear,” you say, with minimal effort at sincerity. “You’ve still got a few days left, though, right?”

“I would like you to accompany us,” she says.

“No thanks,” you reply.

She stares at you with both her eyes.

“So how _did_ you defeat my Shadow, Adachi-kun?” she says, tone light. “Or Chie’s, for that matter? Did they go on a wild rampage to kill us and then just… stop?”

“I asked nicely,” you laugh weakly.

She doesn’t laugh with you. “This investigation is over if we let Namatame die,” she says. “We need every person available to help. Your excuse is no longer valid.”

“I don’t know how to control it! It’s not like yours.”

“That’s fine.”

“But you said yourself I would be a hindrance,” you plead.

“A more accurate word would be liability,” she says, “one that I am now willing to risk.”

You’re ready to snap back something rather uncharitable, but stop. You think. No matter how stiff and straight her back, or expressionless her face, or willful her words, she’s the one at the disadvantage. She’s asking _you_ for help, and you don’t owe her shit. It doesn’t matter which way her left eye looks.

But as if she can read your mind: “You did promise to see this through to the end,” says Yukiko.

“I meant to rescue Chie-senpai, not to find the murderer altogether,” you say quickly.

“Then please read the fine print next time.”

“That was a verbal contract,” you snap.

“And the promise was to the end,” she says, levelling you with a stare from her empty left eye.

No, you don’t owe her anything. You don’t, you don’t. “Then I guess it’s a blow to my honor,” you say, “but you really can’t… make me, can you, Senpai? You can’t really forcibly drag me to the TV and _make_ me fight.” You smile a little, just to piss her off, and shrug. “I won’t do it.”

“And why not?” she demanded, a note of desperation in her voice. “There’s a man’s life at stake, the truth of the deaths of two women—“

“Why should I care?” you say. “I know it’s harsh, but it’s the truth, isn’t it? I don’t benefit at all from saint’s work.”

“Are you just _incapable_ of acting outside your own benefit?” she asks, incredulous.

You shrug again. “I don’t really make the rules of this world, do I?”

“That’s not an exc—“ She stops, and takes a deep breath. You see her fighting to keep her lip from curling. She takes another breath.

“Is there _anything_ I can do to persuade you?” she says at last. “Anything to convince you to keep your word.”

Abruptly, you think of the boy with the PSP, eyes glittering as he talks about the Amagi Challenge. The hottest, richest, most popular girl in town, you remember. With a cute giggle, the boy had said. And here she is, offering you a blank check to _anything_.

“Adachi-kun?” she presses.

Anything, you think. You could ask for anything. The idea makes your head spin. She wants to continue this investigation pretty bad; how far would she go? Money? The gun she wouldn’t give you? And shit, you’re a teenaged boy, she’s _gorgeous_ …

“Adachi-kun?” she repeats.

“Chie-senpai comes too,” your mouth says.

Wait, shit, no, that’s not what you wanted to say. You hadn’t even decided. You were going to make use of this opportunity! _Chie_? Of all things to use your trump card on? What the hell—

But Yukiko visibly balks. You reconsider.

“Whoa, don’t tell me you guys _still_ haven’t made up?” you say, peering at her like she were a zoo animal on display. Her discomfort increases, as does your satisfaction. “But I thought you were best friends? I thought you wanted to find the truth of your friendship?”

“I… just need more time,” she says, but her conviction is losing steam.

“I guess it’s true,” you say, “that it’s easy to say the truth is what you want when it’s nice. But Chie-senpai’s shadow really makes yours look like a lightbulb in comparison.”

Her lips purse. “I meant what I said.”

“You’re not really acting like it,” you snap. “Chie-senpai probably has a functional Persona, and you’re bypassing your best friend for—”

“ _Stop it_.”

You squeak and shut up. The yellow-bellied hindbrain screams that you’ve gone too far, from the way Yukiko’s one good eye glares at you from under her bangs.

“I already said,” she says, low and dangerous, “that I need more time. I’m working on the situation between _me_ and _my_ best friend, I have determined that I need more time, and you do _not_ factor into that equation. Leave it _alone_.”

You don’t say anything.

She leans back in her seat and folds her hands.

“Anything else?” she asks coldly.

Your fingers are frozen around the chair’s armrests. Your heartrate skyrockets to triple digits. You swallow with your dry tongue, twice, until the lump in your throat disappears. “N-Nope,” you say. “Nothing to add.”

“Then will you or will you not accompany us?”

“I-I mean, I dunno, Senpai… It’s not up to me?”

Her eyes narrow. “What does that mean?”

Carefully, you raise your shoulders in a single, careless shrug, and look down.

“Nothing to add… My conditions stand.”

***

_AFTER SCHOOL, THE NEXT DAY_

“I thought you said you didn’t have a Persona?” Yosuke says, spinning his wrench around his finger.

You laugh nervously. Oh, caught in the act. “I don’t really know what it is… I black out every time I try to use it.”

Yosuke drops the wrench. “What? Are you sure you should be here?”

Absolutely not. “Well…”

“I can’t do this alone,” says Yukiko’s voice, and you both turn to see her sliding out of the stack of TVs into the TV world. Behind her, Chie’s head emerges from the same screen, expression wary, but Yukiko doesn’t turn to wait. “You and I know, Yosuke, that we gave it our best shot. Adachi-kun will be fine.”

Yosuke drops the other wrench, but he’s grinning. “Chie! You came!”

“Hey!” she said, offended. “What’s the surprise for?”

“I thought you’d be too scared or something, after everything that happened…”

“Who’re you calling scared?” Chie demanded.

“Well, it’d be the ladylike thing to do, wouldn’t it?”

Chie’s foot plants itself in Yosuke’s gut, and he doubles over with a groan. “Nice shot,” you say, appreciating the sight of Yosuke in pain and Chie’s rather short biker shorts.

“I was aiming lower,” says Chie, voice stiff with faux-casualty.

“Have you no compassion for your fellow man, Adachi-kun?” Yosuke groaned.

Not with the Shadow you saw Chie hiding. He deserved that one.

“You’ll be okay to come with us?” asks Yukiko, without even a glance at Chie. Yosuke flashes a thumbs-up, still clutching his gut. “Ah, if you insist… Well, since we’re all here, we should get going, shall we?”

“Let’s do this!” says Chie. You internally wince at the forced cheer.

Yosuke’s head lifts. “What about the glasses?”

Yukiko’s head tilts. “The glasses?”                   

“Well…” He winces, but stands up straight to dig said pair of glasses out of his pocket. “Chie’s glasses are the most valuable piece of equipment we have—you have to admit this fog can be a hindrance, especially with enemies getting the jump on us. But we only have one pair. So who gets to wear it?”

Everyone pauses.

“I think Yukiko should wear them,” says Chie.

Yukiko makes a noncommittal noise. Yosuke looks between you and Chie, but you shrug unhelpfully. Of course _you’d_ rather be the one wearing the glasses because that means you’ll likely get out alive.

“Well, uh, whoever does wear it is going to have to play lookout, from a tactical perspective,” Yosuke continues.

“They’re going to be our best defense—our protective guardian,” muses Yukiko.

“They’ll also have the best chance of survival,” Chie argues.

“Geez,” says Yosuke, “when you put it like that…”

“Chie should wear them,” says Yukiko with finality.

“But—“ Chie starts.

“I don’t want them,” says Yukiko, and plucks them out of Yosuke’s hand and holds them out to Chie.

Chie’s face, slowly, falls. “Oh,” says Chie. “I just thought…”

Yukiko looks away, towards you, and avoids your gaze too. “…They go terribly with red,” she says.

Chie looks from Yukiko’s scarlet uniform to her yellow glasses. Slowly, Chie takes the glasses back.

“…I’ll do my best,” she says.

“Thank you,” Yukiko murmurs.

Together you set out, Yukiko and Yosuke at the lead, you trailing behind, and Chie watching your backs, making your way through the fog to Taro Namatame. As Yukiko and Yosuke mark down landmarks in Yosuke’s notebook under Chie’s careful supervision, you see the hopeful, shy beginnings of Yukiko’s smile. You duck your head lower and go where you’re told.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i like to call yukiko's eye the adachi-bullshit-o-meter. it's her geass. happy finals season!!


	9. The Pearly Gates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re at all sensitive to certain material, please check the tags and archive warnings one more time before you read this chapter.

“Didn’t we just come that way?” says Yukiko doubtfully.

“No, I swear, it’s not on the map,” says Yosuke, “we couldn’t have come down that way.”

“But isn’t that corner where we fought the table…?”

“I thought your fire scorched the wall over there,” says Chie.

“Well, none of us can _see_ except you, so we wouldn’t know,” says Yosuke. “ _Is_ there a mark?”

“I have a pair of glasses, not a telescope!”

“Then should we check it out?” says Yukiko. “It doesn’t hurt to take a look…”

“It’s really not on the map, guys,” Yosuke complains.

“Since when were you an expert map maker?” Chie retorts.

“I took geometry! And I have eyes!”

“Is that all it takes to make maps…?” says Yukiko lightly. “Adachi-kun, didn’t you make the maps bef—“

“Shadow alert! One right over there!” says Chie, pointing off into the fog.

“Shh! You’ll tip it off!”

Chie pouts. “You’re not being any quieter, Yosuke! It doesn’t matter if it hears us anyway; we can take a shrimp like that.”

“I’d rather we go back,” says Yukiko. “We should conserve our strength.”

“But we don’t know if this is the correct—“

“Right, right!” says Chie. “Let’s go back.”

“But the map!” Yosuke complains.

“If we found the stairs, does it really matter?” asks Chie.

“For future reference, yeah, probably!” Yosuke says. “Shouldn’t we fight it anyway? It’s so small; it’d be good practice.”

“But Yukiko said—“

“Yeah _but_ ,” says Yosuke, sounding as irritated with ‘what Yukiko said’ as you are, “the only way we’re gonna get better as a _team_ is with practice. Yukiko-san’s been here for days and her Persona’s way stronger already, but no matter how much fire she can put out, fighting with other people is a whole other deal.”

Yukiko frowns. “I would rather we take the stairs before we tried that again.”

“The Shadows only get stronger and more dangerous on upper floors,” says Yosuke.

“But if we take the stairs, we’ll be closer to Namatame, and you can start fresh on another map.”

“Guys—“ says Chie.

“We can’t just charge ahead without preparing ourselves! That’s something Chie would do.”

“ _Yosuke_ —“

“Well, isn’t it?”

Yukiko gives Yosuke an intent look—or her right eye does, and her left stares out over his shoulder. “But the purpose of this is to find Namatame,” says Yukiko. “The rain is coming in a few days, and we have no idea if we’re anywhere near him.”

“Guys!” says Chie again.

“Nobody’s gonna do anything,” says Yosuke, “if they’re _dead_!”

“ _SHADOW_!” Chie cries, just as a swarm of ravens dive out of the fog and lunge at Yukiko’s head.

She dives out of the way. You shriek and duck when the ravens rally and comes your way; Chie kicks one away, and another makes a swipe at her open stomach. It slices through her skirt instead, and another prepares to strike. “Calm down!” Yosuke’s shouting somewhere. “They took us by surprise, but they’re not strong! Hit them with—”

“ _Agi_!”

Fire streaks past you and hits the raven closest to Chie square in the face, but it doesn’t even falter. Yukiko blinks rapidly in surprise. “It’s not affected by fire! We did this on the last floor!” Yosuke yells, frustrated. “Hit them with anything _but_ fire!”

“ _Bufu_!” Chie cries. Tomoe bursts into life over her head; the Shadow shrieks as ice crystallizes and shatters, and the raven dissipates into black dust and smoke. “One down!” she yells.

Yukiko bats one raven away with her fan, only for the raven to flap wildly into Chie’s face. “Sorry, I—look out! There’s more!” Yukiko calls, and ducks a pair of large metal dice whizzing through the fray.

The dice spin towards _you_ , but there’s ravens snapping and cawing in your escape routes—shit shit shit shit this isn't what you signed up for, they _said_ you wouldn't be in any danger, they said so; distantly you can hear your own voice panicking aloud. You shut your eyes involuntarily, grip Yukiko’s kama tightly, raise your arm, and yelp as fire brushes past your hand.

“Sorry, sorry!” says Yukiko. You clutch your burned hand and resist the urge to curl into the fetal position.

The dice waver, but make a lunge for you anyway. You dart to the left and crash right into Yosuke. “Hey!” he protests, scrabbling for his dropped notebook.

“Look out!” you cry, and swing your kama wildly in the direction of the looming dice; they fall back, but you grit your teeth with the shock of steel hitting steel reverberating up your arm.

“They’re resistant to physical attacks!” Yosuke says. You groan, holding your arm, and swat at a raven until Yosuke smacks it with his wrench. “C’mon, Adachi-kun! Use your Persona!”

“I don’t wanna _pass out_!” you shriek.

“Ow!” cries Chie’s voice; you turn around to see Yukiko’s accidentally smacked her with her fan.  

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”

“Yukiko—“ A raven rears its head, and Chie flings out a hand. “ _Bufu_!”

The raven explodes under Tomoe’s ice. “That’s the last one!” says Yukiko, excited, but Tomoe flickers and slumps in midair. Chie clutches her head, and Yukiko falters. “…C-Chie?”

“I-I’m okay, I just—“

“Duck and cover!” Yosuke shouts. “It’s gonna use Last Resort!”

Yukiko freezes. Chie squints through her glasses. Behind Yosuke, the dice spin, high above your heads, all faces showing death.

“Last what?” you say faintly.

“ _Run_!” Yosuke yells, frustrated, as the dice drop and everything explodes.

***

After your ears stop ringing, you find yourself staring up at a headless cathedral angel, a hole gouged through its torso. That, you think, is physically impossible unless the sculptor intentionally planned the statue that way; a blow with that force through the torso of a stone statue would destroy the whole thing. Who made this thing?

You drag yourself up to a sitting position, leaning your tense shoulders against a stone cathedral arch, and check for broken bones. You feel burnt, like you’ve been sitting in front of a fireplace for way too long, way too close, but you can’t smell any burning meat. Oh, that’s gross, why’d you have to think that? You realize the back of your school jacket is covered in ash. Shit, how are you going to hide that from your mother? The fog is too thick, though it feels cool on your hot skin. A stone gargoyle scowls from the top of the arch _—me too, buddy—_ and you can already hear other people murmuring in the fog.

Go away, you think, wishing this arch would hide you. This isn't any fun at all.

“Adachi-kun?” you hear a voice.

“Present,” you call back on reflex. Good god, how you wish you weren’t. After this, you’re gonna have to get up and do it all over again—the shitty teamwork, the questionable map-making… oh man, after all that freaking out you did just now, it’s gonna be embarrassing, too...

Dimly, you can make out Yukiko crouching over Chie, Konohana Sakuya drifting faint lights over Chie’s head. Yosuke limps out of the fog, looking around wildly and clutching his notebook to his chest like it’ll keep him alive. His headphones survived, incredibly; a few of his jacket buttons didn’t. “Oh, there you are,” he sighs, and relaxes. “Geez. Are you hurt or something?”

You make a garbled noise of discontent. “N-No, I—don’t _think_ I’m hurt… ow, my back...”

“Yukiko can look at you, then,” says Yosuke. “Geez,” he sighs again, to himself this time, and stumps away without offering to help you up. You feel like you could bitch about it, but you understand the sentiment completely.

“You don’t need to waste more energy on me,” Chie’s protesting. “Look, my arm is fine, the bone’s completely straight.”

“Just because it’s straight doesn’t mean it’s mended,” says Yukiko firmly.  

You groan and pull yourself to your feet; there’s no way in hell you’re letting _Yukiko_ heal your bruises, so you’d better pull yourself together and look respectable. You make your way across the hallway to Yukiko, Chie, and Yosuke, and throw yourself against _that_ wall instead.

“So, just so we’re on the same page after that fiasco,” you say, “what _was_ that?”

“It wasn’t _that_ bad,” Chie protests. Nobody else does.

“Last Resort is a move some Shadows do,” Yosuke explains, flipping through his notebook. You see doodles of Shadows and notes jotted in the margins. “I haven’t got it recorded for any other Shadow but the dice ones, but who knows… Anyway, it’s basically a self-destruct. They wait a bit, and then, regardless of how damaged they are, take as much as they can with them.”

You make a face. Seems embarrassing, having to initiate your own death. They don’t even have the excuse of being cornered.

“I know, it’s pretty morbid. Guess we shouldn’t have expected anything less from a place like this, though,” Yosuke says, scratching the back of his neck.

Yosuke introduced the huge complex that they suspected Namatame was in as the “Pearly Gates”—because it was true; the opening gates were huge, white, clean, and the most stereotypical heaven on earth that you’d ever seen. Water fountains littered the first few floors, pooling in clean grass and washing your footprints off the pure white marble floors. Movie sets couldn’t have crammed more stereotypes into a place if they tried. But then you went down a few floors, and the water blackened and dried, crusting in the fountains; the floors oozed grime and soot; you’ve seen rust dripping down from high arches. Poisoned paradise: the long fall from Eden.

You’re going to hell, obviously, on a road of good intentions. And with the teamwork your group has just displayed, you can’t even get to hell _correctly_.

“Where do you think these buildings come from?” says Chie. Konohana Sakuya’s lights begin to dwindle, and she shakes the last few out of her hair. “They seem too… specific to the person in question to be random, don’t you think? I mean, if Taro Namatame is the killer… or involved in the murder in any way, then this place is...”

Heaven and hell, you think, dryly. A place of judgment, represented in a church—a place of confession.

“Who knows?” says Yosuke. “We don’t even know what the TV world is…”

There’s a silence. Konohana Sakuya vanishes, and Yukiko brushes her hands off on her skirt. “All done,” she announces. “Does anyone else need healing?”

“I’m good,” says Yosuke. “Nothing major yet.”

“No thanks,” you say.

“Ah…” She looks around at the group, her left eye trailing uselessly. “Then… shall we continue?”

Chie is suddenly preoccupied with her left shoe. Yosuke’s eyebrows twist doubtfully. You try to catch their eye, but as soon as Yosuke makes eye contact, he hesitates. You cannot _believe_ you have to be the one to say this—to Yukiko, of all people, after all the stuff you said earlier…

“Well, with all due respect, Senpai,” you say, trying your _damnest_ to say that sincerely, “I dunno if we… can continue like this…?”  

Yukiko bites her lip.  

“Like. I dunno how to say this, but. Aha ha ha,” you say. “We’re gonna die if we carry on this way.”

“Well, perhaps we… need practice,” she says.

“Right, right, we need that too,” you say, “but we also, apparently, need telepathy to read each other’s minds so we don’t smack each other instead of Shadows. Right?”

Yukiko’s expression grows just a fraction colder. Oh boy, she has _not_ forgiven or forgotten, no matter how she might behave around Chie and Yosuke. Right, fine, okay, the feeling’s one-hundred percent mutual anyway; just have to lay off the sass.

You speak faster: “W-What I’m saying is that we need some way to communicate,” you explain, “and if not to communicate, someone to manage what we’re doing. To make sure that our plan of action is sorted out and all that.”

Yosuke snaps his fingers. “The easiest way to do that would be to have a leader.”

“Right! What a good idea, Yosuke-senpai!” you say, like you hadn’t thought of that twenty minutes ago. God, these people are stupid.

“A leader…” Yukiko echoes thoughtfully. She looks at you with her good eye, long and careful. “Oh, that’s not a bad idea.”

“If I knew where I gotta kick, I bet I could hit a lot harder,” Chie pitches in.

“Alright,” says Yosuke, “now we’re getting somewhere!” Chie grins widely, if briefly.

“Yeah,” you say, only a little impatiently. “But, uh, that doesn’t tell us _who_ ’s gonna be the leader.”

Yosuke falters. There they go again, skipping steps, you think. “Well...” says Yosuke, but stops. God help you if you have to lead them through _everything_.

“I don’t know much about leading, but I’d think that somebody who’s had experience here should be the leader,” Chie volunteers. “Adachi-kun and I just got here, but Yosuke-kun and Yukiko have been here for days.”

Yukiko covers her mouth, a faint pink on her cheeks, but Yosuke is nodding. “That makes sense. Although, wasn’t Adachi-kun here way earlier than all of us?”

“Ah, no, I didn’t really have any experience with fighting,” you say quickly. You are _not_ accepting responsibility for leadership; Yukiko calling in her promise from before was bad enough. “Besides, I can’t even use my Persona.”

“Yosuke-kun doesn’t have one either,” says Yukiko, then re-covers her mouth.

“But Yukiko-san _does_ …” Yosuke frowns. “Well…”

You barely restrain your foot from impatiently tapping on the floor.

“I wouldn’t know anything about leading a team in battle,” says Yukiko, cheeks bright red.

“I guess I was on a sports team in elementary?”

“I managed the inn by myself for a week…”

You’re almost shaking with the effort of standing still.

“Because Yukiko-senpai has a Persona and Yosuke-senpai doesn’t, each one would have to be different leaders by necessity,” you blurt out. “Yosuke-senpai has his notebook full of Shadow information, making him the person with the fastest access to information we need. He also has the birds-eye view, so to speak, because he won’t be fighting in battle unless approached, at which point he only has his kunai. That means he can see the fight from a more logical, big-picture point of view, but it also means that he’s attacked and taken out, we’re all sunk.  

“Yukiko-senpai, on the other hand, has managed the inn, which is the closest any of us are going to get with leadership experience, and actually possesses a Persona. When she gives orders, it’ll be from the point of view of somebody actually fighting on the ground, which prevents her from seeing the big picture but gives information on what the fight actually _feels_ like, which is probably valuable for something, I guess. She’ll have her Persona, which makes her way harder to actually take out, plus she’ll be closer to Chie-senpai, who can cover her; the flip side is that she might get too distracted to give proper orders, and being up close and personal with the enemy is still as dangerous as being removed from the enemy without a defense. Furthermore, she doesn’t have immediate access to information, so Yosuke-senpai will have to tell her. Granted, Yukiko-senpai has healing abilities, which gives her even more of a natural defense.” You take a breath. “So it depends on if you want somebody logical and detached with more information and no defense, or somebody in the thick of it with high defense.” And then another breath.

Yukiko's eyebrows have disappeared under her bangs.

“Dang,” says Yosuke.

“Yeah, that was really well thought-out!” Chie says, and you duck your head to hide your blush, only to see Yukiko smiling, contemplative. _Ugh_.

“I don’t have any experience with leading either,” you mumble. “It’s just conjecture based on things I’ve read…”

“Better than anything I would have come up with,” Yukiko says. “I think that’s a fair analysis, don’t you guys think?”

“Definitely,” says Chie. Shit, if your blush hasn’t gone away after seeing her shadow, you’re stuck with it forever.

“But like he said, now it depends on what kind of leadership we’re going for,” says Yosuke. “Thinking or feeling, right? Should we take a vote?”

When he puts it that way, Yosuke is the obvious choice. “What do you think, Chie-senpai?” you ask.

“I’d rather trust somebody fighting at my side,” says Chie immediately. You almost roll your eyes; of course she’d say that, trying to get back into Yukiko’s good books…

“Really?” says Yosuke. “I dunno, if I had to put faith in somebody, it’d be somebody cool and detached. Not somebody who’s above it all, but somebody who can walk right through the fire and still have it all under control. Somebody who looks like they know what they’re doing, you know?”

“So not you, then," says Chie flatly.

“Hey!”

“I don’t have any opinion,” says Yukiko quietly.

“If you two are the candidates, the vote should be between the people who aren’t,” says Chie, eyeing Yosuke suspiciously.

Yukiko nods almost emphatically. “Um, so what do you think, Adachi-kun?”

You rub the back of your neck. “I would have to agree with Yosuke-senpai…”

Yosuke frowns. “But then that's a split vote...”

Yukiko looks between you and Chie, looking like she's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Geez, if it bothers her that much, maybe you _should_ vote for Yukiko. No, you couldn't do that; Yosuke is right. You're not handing the reigns of this operation to somebody who isn't properly detached from the situation...

“Sorry, I can’t change what I said,” says Chie. “I really would prefer somebody who I know has my back. If Yosuke had a Persona, maybe I could say differently, but…”

Oh, for goodness’ sake. You’d rather just get the show on the road than actually debate this. “It doesn’t have to be just one person,” you say desperately. “What if they split the role? Having two people as leader is better than all four of us not knowing what we’re doing, right?”

Yosuke’s face falls just a fraction, but when he looks at Yukiko, he nods. Yukiko seems relieved and tense all at once. “That seems like a fair resolution,” he says. “I mean, for now.”

She bites her lip. “…If it’ll help us find Namatame, I look forward to working with you,” she says.

“Let’s do our best,” he agrees.

Your hands clench tightly around your kama.

***

"I think that was a good suggestion," Yukiko tells you.

You stop humming and swinging your kama to look over your shoulder at her; she walks with her fans politely folded in front of her skirt. You glance ahead; Chie and Yosuke are arguing loudly, as Yosuke has been given the role of navigator and is now the executive decision on where to go while Chie is still the only one with glasses, but they're both too far ahead to help. She's got you cornered—or rather, you let your guard down.  

"I think you’re mistaken, Senpai. I think it was Yosuke-senpai who suggested it," you hedge.

"Oh, was it?" she says. "I must be confused..."

You shrug nervously. "Yeah, that's uh... well, this whole place is confusing, huh?"

You wave your hand around at the long hallway—the longest hallway you've been down yet. The stones under your feet are growing darker with every step; your shoes have long been covered in ash. You walk in the dead center to avoid the rust that congeals in the seams. The fog, rather than a bleaching white, seems to grow cloudy and blend with the shadows. The occasional angel statues you pass are missing more limbs, more faces, and seem take up even more space.

“The ceiling _is_ getting lower,” remarks Yukiko. Is she stupid, you wonder, or airheaded, or…?

“Yeah, creepy, huh? So Yosuke-senpai,” you say loudly (you’d rather not talk to anyone, but better Yosuke than Yukiko), “how did you find this place?”

“Y-Yeah,” says Chie, nervously, “how do you even know Namatame is in here?”

She gives another limbless, faceless angel a wide berth. Yukiko covers her mouth with her hand.

“Well…” says Yosuke.

"Oh geez," says Chie, "don't tell me you just guessed..."

"No, no, we didn't!" says Yosuke, just as he pauses in front of a T-fork in the hallway. "It's just a really _weird_ story. Let's go left, guys."

"I think there's something to the right, though," says Chie, squinting.

"Then shouldn't we go right...?" says Yukiko.

"No, let's go left. We should cover the dead ends first," says Yosuke, and heads off. Chie looks uncertainly at Yukiko's lack of expression, and doesn't move until Yukiko follows Yosuke herself.

"Anyway, we're pretty sure that Namatame's here," says Yosuke. "See like, the first time Yukiko-san and I got here, we had no idea where to go. With the fog and everything, and five million walkways—it's not like Namatame left a bread crumb trail for us or anything, right?"

You frown. You glance over at Yukiko. "But when we found Chie-senpai..." you begin.

"There wasn't a Shadow trail this time," Yukiko confirms. "Because we went back and looked at that trail, and we confirmed that it was made of Shadow bits. There was no trail for Namatame."

“Trail?” asked Chie. “The person who brought me here left you a _trail_ to find me? What nerve!”

“It was more likely unintentional, right?” says Yukiko.

“To recap,” says Yosuke, “there was a Shadow trail for Chie, leading to her dojo. That’s the biggest clue we have to the circumstances surrounding her kidnapping. There was no Shadow trail for Namatame, leading to his, uh, church thing. Whether it was intentional or not, it’s probably two different people who are responsible for Namatame being here, right?”

“This doesn’t really look like a church anymore…” says Chie, pulling her elbows in a little closer to herself.

“Instead,” says Yosuke, “there was this figure in the fog.”

You stop walking.

Everyone else stops walking, too, and looks at you. “Adachi-kun?” asks Yosuke, closing his notebook. “Did you remember something?”

“Oh, no, ahaha, I just—” You try to calm your irrationally fast heartbeat. “The first time I fell in here, I saw uh… something similar, I guess.”

“You saw a figure in the fog?” asks Yukiko quickly.

“No, no, I saw one of those ball things with the tongues as a silhouette...”

That’s not right, a voice in your head thinks. The one on the walkway—you heard it take a step, you saw its shape—and it was like a human, like a...

“We don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a Hablerie,” says Yosuke. “It was sort of, like…”

“Muttering to itself,” Yukiko supplies. “Things like, ‘Get him out,’ or, “Invading my space,’ or, ‘Disturbing the quiet,’ or… it was definitely saying Namatame’s name a lot… oh, what was the last one…”

“‘He won’t make me less alone,’” says Yosuke.

You shrink into your school jacket.

“Geez, stop telling scary stories! Y-You’re scaring Adachi-kun!” says Chie. “That doesn’t happen in real life!”

“It did, it—ow! It happened, I swear! Ask Yukiko-san!”

“So whatever that thing was,” says Yukiko, “it doesn’t want Namatame here. So we figured that it would definitely try to lead us to where Namatame is.”

“But what _was_ it?” you ask, urgency in your voice despite yourself. “Did you see it at all? What was its voice like?”

Yukiko looks upwards in thought. “Hmm… Now that you mention it, the voice sounded kind of… familiar, didn’t it? But it was definitely humanoid—not very tall, kind of thin…”

“Like a—” Chie swallows hard. “Like a ghost?”

She looks so incredibly terrified for a moment that you almost burst out laughing. She must have seen your face, though, because she cries, “It’s serious, Adachi-kun! What if the ghost is following us, or lying in wait, or—” She shudders, obviously having scared herself on accident. Yukiko muffles a giggle.

“You’re such a chicken,” Yosuke scoffs. “We don’t know if ghosts can even exist here, okay? For all we know, that was just another Shadow. Can Shadows be sentient? Or maybe it was just a regular human like us, and he was trying to help us out.”

“You would think that any other human who was here,” you say, “would be by default the killer. Otherwise they’d come forward and talk to us, right?”

“Oh,” says Yosuke, surprised, “you’re probably right about that…”

“Okay, okay, let’s keep going,” says Chie hurriedly, looking over her own shoulder as if expecting a ghost to appear right then and there. “I gotta relieve this stress by taking action.”

“Better Shadows than me,” Yosuke complains.

“C’mon, Adachi-kun,” says Yukiko, and waits when you don’t move. “You look worried.”

“What, me? No, nah, it’s just… the headache,” you say, smoothing out your face. And it’s true; you don’t have a reason to be worried. Why are you worried? Maybe because these dumbasses have taken you to a giant building on the shady advice from an unknown informant. Yeah, that’s it. What were they thinking? Idiots...

Then you realize that although it looks like she’s waiting for you, she’s more standing in your way than anything else. “What you said about another human being here—I didn’t think of that. You’re quite clever when you put your mind to it, aren’t you?”

“Top of my class!” you say with false cheer. You wonder if you should just walk around her, but that’d get your shoes dirty, and you don’t wanna explain that to your mother, and…

“You’re also quite helpful for someone who doesn’t want to be here.”

Your urge to run flares up again. “I figure I shouldn’t, er, half-ass it since I’m here, right…?”

“You actually looked like you were having fun for a bit.”

Of course you were having fun; everyone else in the group was too busy talking to each other, so for ten whole minutes it was just you and your road to hell, and the fog felt nice on your slightly burnt skin, and the headache hadn’t even kicked in yet. It’d been everything you’d hoped for from the TV world before Yukiko and Chie and Yosuke barged in on your one-person party. “I was happy there hadn’t been any Shadow attacks for a while?” you hedge, as best you can, but you already know it’ll fall flat.

Yukiko’s lips tighten with exasperation.

“Why is it,” she says, almost kindly, “that what you say and what you do never line up?”

Suddenly, you’re blazingly furious. What does she think you’re doing, asking these questions after you so thoroughly burnt that bridge? Where does she get off on extending olive branches? What makes her think she has a shot in hell, that you’d possibly return the favor? How _dare_ she presume that you—how dare she assume that the _world_ will return her kindness with kindness? What in hell—

You grit your teeth.

“It’s not that I don’t want to be here,” you say instead. Yukiko moves just enough to the left, and when you start walking, Yukiko falls in line beside you. “I mean… I was kind of looking forward to using my Persona…”

Yukiko stiffens, and you know she’s thinking about what you said about guns in Chie’s dojo. Shit, why’d you say that? Of course your one moment of confessional comes back to bite you in the ass; you won’t make that mistake again.

“Not that way,” you say quickly. “I guess I—I know there’s something wrong with mine, and that’s why it doesn’t work, but I’d really like it to. It sounds like it’d be really cool, having that much… ability to change things, I guess? To make an impact? A… a difference?”

Yukiko’s eyes widen with what looks like understanding. “But you protested so strongly...”

“There are some people who don’t listen to reality, and some people who do,” you say, looking straight ahead. “And there are some people who can afford not to, and some people who can’t, right?”

“So things like school,” she says, “or family…” She fiddles with her fan, her expression softening. “...That… makes a lot of sense.”

You cannot _believe_ she ate that. You look off at the opposite wall to hide what part of your smile you can’t keep off your face. You cannot _believe_ that after everything you said to her, she’s still willing to put her faith in others.

“Adachi-kun,” she begins.

Oh, what _now_? you think. You’ve already given her a sufficient answer, haven’t you? Call on someone else for once—

“Adachi-kun,” she says urgently. “Do you hear that?”

You stop, and your hair stands on end at the quick, bug-like skittering you hear in the sudden silence. “What—”

“Chie!” Yukiko calls.

Chie turns around, adjusts her glasses, and her mouth falls open, eyes fixed on something behind you. “Two Pesces!” she shouts. “One beetle! Adachi-kun, duck!”

You bolt away without another thought; c’mon, c’mon, you didn’t want to talk to Yukiko, but this wasn’t what you wanted, either. There hadn’t been a Shadow attack in almost thirty minutes, why couldn’t they have just left you alone? Two Pesces, on cue, swim out of the fog, their electronic eyes blinking. Yukiko’s fan is out and open; Chie sprints to her side, already bouncing on the tips of her toes.

“The Pesces reflect ice!” Yosuke calls out, a safe distance away from Chie and Yukiko’s front line blockade. “The beetle is weak to ice!”

“Right!” says Chie, just as the beetle lumbers into view and you feel your muscles begin to freeze with fear; it’s the size of a _bear_ , and its horn’s barbed edges gleam in the dim lighting.

Yukiko slices clean through her tarot card, and fire builds around the Pesces. “Konohana Sakuya! _Maragi_!”

Chie smashes through her with her heel, eyes set on the beetle. “Tomoe! _Bufu_!”

“No, attack only one at a time!” Yosuke yells. “Less Shadows to counterattack!”

A Pesce attempts to butt its head against Yukiko, and she dances out of the way. “We’re strong enough to take all of them at once!” she calls back.

“ _Bufu_!” Chie shouts, and the beetle skitters away, its shell already cracking under the ice.

“The beetle is strong to physical attacks because of its shell,” Yosuke reads aloud. “The Pesces are fine to attack, though.”

“I could also stay back and help protect you,” you say weakly.

Yosuke looks at you doubtfully. “You’d be better off helping Yukiko-san, I think.”

“But—”

“C’mon, Adachi-kun, go!” he says, and gives you a hard shove between the shoulderblades. Ah, fuck, you think, staring into the Pesce’s blank neon lights.

Yukiko’s fan buries itself in its electronic grids, and more fire blows through the Shadows before she yanks it out. “I’ve got these two, please help Chie with the beetle!”

“The beetle is strong against physical attacks!” Yosuke repeats again, frustrated, just as the beetle lifts its head and lets out a screech, glowing with faint light. “No, wait, Adachi-kun, get the beetle! It’s powered up; take it out!”

You stare at the beetle’s tiny, hard eyes. “I’ve got it, Adachi-kun!” says Chie, slamming her foot into its soft face, leaping away from its lunge, and following up with another “ _Bufu_!”

Yukiko raises her hands—” _Agilao_!”—and the fire that blasts through the Pesce scorches your face with heat and leaves nothing but ash. “Adachi-kun!” she cries. “Help me with the last Pesce and I can help Chie!”

“Just help Chie!” Yosuke shouts.

“ _Bufu_!” Chie yells, panicked; the thud of ice and the beetle’s shriek.

“The Pesce!”

“Adachi-kun! The beetle!”

“ _Agilao_!”

“Adachi-kun!”

“Adachi-kun!”

“ _Buf—_ ”

Chie screams; there's blood running down her legs, the Beetle's horn is lodged in her side, and as it raises its head Chie's feet leave the ground; Yukiko calls her name and hits the ground hard as the Pesces rams her in the ribs. "Agilao!" Yukiko cries, and the Beetle bursts into ashes. Chie crumples to the floor. "Adachi-kun, the Pesce!"

The Pesce dives towards Yukiko’s unprotected back, spitting sparks and wires.

“Take that—!” you hear someone yell, and Yosuke’s wrench buries itself in the Pesce’s forehead, cracking the silicon and plastic. It bursts into shadows and dust, and only Yosuke’s wrench hits the floor.

He looks pretty proud of himself and his aim until he looks around, sees Yukiko scrambling to her feet and Chie still on the floor. “Shit,” he mutters. Your kama hang uselessly at your sides.

“Chie!” Yukiko cries, but Chie only curls tighter around her bleeding side, and Yukiko moves swiftly to her side. “Chie, it’s okay, I’ve got you— _Diarama_ ,” she says forcefully, and Konohana Sakuya fades into view to scatter lights across Chie’s motionless form. “Chie? Chie, please say something.”

“‘m okay,” you hear Chie’s thin voice say. Yukiko lets out a breath. “Haha, that was really lame, right…? I can’t believe it got me... “

“ _Diarama_ ,” Yukiko says again, more forcefully. “Are you feeling any better?”

You look away awkwardly, making brief eye contact with Tomoe, who lingers over Chie’s head just next to Konohana Sakuya like a pair of bodyguards. “Uh, nice aim there,” you tell Yosuke.

“Thanks,” he says. “That was a disaster.”

Well, okay, he said it, not you.

“Would you _stop_ saying that,” snaps Chie. Yukiko makes a noise of protest, but Chie sits up anyway, trying to brush her hair out of face and only smearing blood across her nose. “Saying stuff like ‘that was a fiasco’ or ‘that was a disaster’—that doesn’t help anyone!”

Yosuke blinks. “I didn’t mean…”

“Then think about what it’ll mean before you say it!”

“You’re one to talk,” he snaps back.

“Chie-senpai,” you protest, “we said that because it was a problem, and we only wanted to fix it—”

“Then have something constructive to say, too,” she retorts. “But otherwise, it just sounds like you expected failure from the start, so you acted like the fight was over before it was begun. You can’t _do_ that! If you expect everything to be horrible, of course it will be! And once it’s a habit, then you’re sunk; because the world you’ll influence around yourself will be just as terrible as you expect it to be!”

You look down. So does Chie, as if only just now embarrassed over her outburst. You hope she’s realizing how hypocritical she sounds; how much she can’t follow her own damn advice.

“We do need practice,” she admits. “We have a lot to improve on. We haven’t done this before. Neither has anyone else; we can’t really ask anyone for advice. That’s why we have the responsibility to find Namatame, though, right?”

“Yes,” is all Yukiko says.

“I mean, we’re all going to make mistakes,” says Chie. You wonder if Chie even knows where she’s going with this. “And the stakes are pretty high for mistakes right now, I guess… But that’s the good part about having a team, right? If I make a mistake, I know Yukiko can heal me. Adachi-kun is really smart, and he’ll see things that I won’t. And at the very least, I trust Yosuke-kun’s handwriting is readable—”

“You’d know, stealing all my English notes,” says Yosuke, without much venom.

“Anyway, it’s not always going to be easy, right? But if we keep trying, I know we can really get somewhere. We’re really close to Namatame,” she says, and for a whole second, you actually believe her. “I can feel it. And then we can get him to safety, we’ll have saved a person, and we can ask him about what this creepy building is all about. And—and we’re gonna make a lot of mistakes, and we've made a lot of mistakes, but we’re going to get better, right?”

“Right,” you agree, without even realizing what you’ve said until you’ve said it.

Yosuke looks at you with surprise. “Yeah,” he says. “Absolutely.”

Chie looks at Yukiko, and cautiously peers under Yukiko’s bangs. “...Right?”

Yukiko bows her head further. “With lots of work,” she concedes.

“Yeah,” says Chie, then grins. “Okay! Um, sorry about blowing up at you guys. I’d like to blame the hole in my side, but I’m feeling loads better now. You guys wanna try that one more time?”

Yosuke pulls out his notebook. “Let’s do it. Yukiko-san, do you wanna talk about who makes what decisions, so we don’t contradict each other again?”

She smiles. “That sounds like a great idea.”

“This area should be clear of Shadows for a while,” says Yosuke, “but there’s this one hallway we saw before that seemed to have a lot, if we want a place for another test run…”

“Adachi-kun, maybe we can figure out how to use that weapon of yours,” says Chie brightly. “I mean, I’ve never really used one, but I taught myself how to kick things from martial arts movies, so maybe we could do the same for you. Don’t know unless we try, right?”

You hesitate.

“I know, it’s not the greatest method...”

Yukiko looks at you curiously from the corner of her right eye.

“I guess fighting is kind of new to all of us,” Yosuke tries.

You wince. “That’s not…”

“Adachi-kun?” says Chie again.

“Chie-senpai,” you say, “your… Persona—”

Konohana Sakuya has long since faded, but Tomoe is still hanging in the air, towering at least seven feet above your heads. The only movement is the slight sway of her hair; her naginata, frozen in her massive hand, brushes the ground. The Persona does not breathe, you realize, no matter how human it may look. And when you look it in the eye, it does not blink.

“Chie…?” asks Yukiko.

“Tomoe?” Chie echoes.

Its knuckles flex around its grip on the naginata.

“What’s going on?” asks Yosuke, confused. “Why’re we all staring at Chie’s Persona?”

Tomoe raises one massive arm.

“Oh,” says Yosuke, “oh sh—”

The naginata plunges through the floor, ripping long cracks through the stone; Yukiko is yelling something through the din of stone crumbling, but the entire building must be shaking; Tomoe raises the blade again, and this time the force knocks you off your feet and you land hard on your shoulder. Dust pours down through the ceiling, spilling into your eyes. You’re probably screaming too, but you can’t hear; something, something massive and inhuman, is roaring in pain larger than yours. The ceiling cracks, bends inward; you roll to your feet and sprint for all you’re worth; but the roar grows louder in your ears as the ceiling caves and gives, your foot twists on the shattered floors, and the ground rushes to meet you.

***

“...ke-kun! Adachi-kun!”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it…”

Consciousness doesn’t feel so much like waking up from unconsciousness as it does like you’ve been ejected from unthinkingness. You groan loudly and clutch your head, but it’s not quite the same pressured headache from the fog. The skin there is wet, so you assume you’re bleeding. You try to curl into yourself, but pain lances through your ankle, and you yelp loudly.

“Stop it, stop it…”

You sit up, and blink at the faint noise of water splashing. You realize you’re not in the same hallway—you’re sitting in a very large, very dark circular room. The only light comes from the hole in the ceiling you must have fallen through, and it streams down hazily upon the rubble strewn through the room. You squint, looking for doors, but there are none: instead every inch of the walls are covered in ash and every inch of the floor is covered in blood.

You shriek again and cover your mouth, swallowing hard on the faint taste of bile. The stench of iron is hard in your nose.

“Stop it…”

“Adachi-kun!” calls Yukiko’s voice again. You spot her wriggling under a broken angel statue, one arm looped around Chie’s waist, who lies face-up and half-submerged in the blood. Both seem unharmed, although Yukiko seems to be stuck. “Chie, Chie, wake up! Please!”

“Yukiko-senpai—”

“Stop!”

You shut up on reflex. Yukiko drags Chie closer to herself, like she could hide her under the cave of the broken angel. The first thing you see is the revolver in his hand, polished spotless. Next is the bloody hand that holds it.

“I didn’t mean to,” he moaned. “Why is this my life? Why… I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean…”

“Namatame-san?” says Yukiko quietly.

“Stop!” he cries, clutching his head, the barrel of the pistol swinging wildly. You try to scramble to your feet, but your ankle cracks and you shriek and hit the floor again. “Stop!” Namatame wails, hunching away from you, covering his head. “Go away, all of you! Don’t look at me!” His leather shoes slosh through the blood as he stumbles away, the hem of his pants soaked through.

“Mayumi,” he moans, holding his hand to the faint light through the ceiling. The light reflects across his wristwatch, catching in his bright yellow eyes.

“Chie, wake up!” Yukiko mumbles, shaking her none-too-gently, and Chie groans.

“You can hide your sins from the world,” Namatame mutters, “but your soul remembers… My actions are written in my life. My sins are as permanent as time. This is the world I’ve made. God is watching. I was watching…”

Abruptly, he fumbles with his wristwatch, ripping it clean off, and sets it down in the broken rubble safe from the blood. “I’m sorry, Mayumi, Misuzu… Blood doesn’t wash out. My sins are written in my life...”

“Namatame-san!”

“Go away!” he cries, covering his ears. “Go away, go away! Don’t look at me! Stop talking!”

Chie opens her eyes. “Chie, you have to stop him!” Yukiko hisses. Chie blinks, dazed.

“I can’t stop this,” Namatame moans. “Time goes on. Your deaths are in my soul. My life keeps going, no matter how ruined with yours…”

“Chie!” pleads Yukiko, but Chie struggles to pull herself up. “Adachi-kun!”

You wrap your arms around yourself. “N-Namatame-san—”

He turns. His eyes, bright yellow, bore into yours. Holds your gaze.

“I just want it to stop,” he says, and brings the gun to his head.

“Chie!” Yukiko screams—

_bang_

 

 


	10. Taro Namatame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only a cat, Tohru.

When the ripples fade away, nobody moves. Then, slowly, unsure if you’re allowed, you lean over and throw up everything in your stomach.

You don’t look up for a long time, just watching your own stomach acid slowly dissolve into the red, but when you do, Yukiko has her face buried in Chie’s stomach, arms still wrapped around her like a girl holding her teddy bear, and Chie’s eyes are frozen wide open and staring at--at it. The back of her hair slowly drips red; the echoed sound of blood hitting blood is the only noise. Yukiko’s chest expands with breath.

When you try to stand, your ankle protests--you think it’s broken, but maybe just sprained. So you sit down. And the sound of blood sloshing around your ankles makes your stomach queasy again, so you wrap your arms around your knees and pull them close. But the light from the watch, still perched on its ruined pedestal, glares in your eyes, so you bury your head in your knees.

For god’s sake, you think, and squeeze your knees tighter to your chest. Your school uniform is ruined now.

You could have, probably, stayed just like that. Fermenting in this lake of blood. Soaking in the smell of iron, until it all smells the same. Shutting your eyes, covering your ears. And when enough time had passed, you could shut this away deep in your foundations and never think of it again. Pack it all in, squeeze it down, compress, compress, wind it tight, until it's small and ugly and forgotten. Never mind the smell of rot and decay coming from the cellars; it’s nothing, nothing happened, nothing is here, nothing is there. Dead water in the basement fermenting in itself, glass on the outside and bacteria on the inside.

But after a while, you hear somebody moving; the blood around your ankles begins to ripple. You look up with caution. Yukiko squirms under the broken angel like an animal caught in a trap; Chie blinks, as if waking from a daze, and realizes who’s latched herself to her stomach. “Y-Yukiko,” says Chie. Her voice trembles, and she swallows hard. “Are you… o-okay?”

“...My leg is stuck,” says Yukiko, without removing her face from Chie’s middle.

“O-Oh,” says Chie. “I can t-try to move it…”

Yukiko, without raising her head, lets go of Chie, who in turn gets to her feet with disbelief, as if surprised to find that she’s still alive. Her clothes drip thickly; her entire back of her body, from her head to her legs, is dyed a dark gelatinous crimson. She takes a few steps, footsteps splashing in the dark, sizes up the angel, then tentatively puts her hands on a wing and pushes. It doesn’t move. She pushes harder. It doesn’t move.

“U-Um, Adachi-kun?” she asks. “Do you mind giving me a hand…?”

“Sorry, Senpai,” you reply. Your voice sounds strange and loud in your ears, and you duck your head. “Um, I think my ankle is… I don’t really wanna move it.”

“Oh, I’m sorry… I should have asked if you were okay…”

“I can, um…” Yukiko raises her head, but her eyes dart to--to it, and away, ashamed of what she’s about to say. Her voice is small: “I can heal you.”

So you stand up as best as you can on your own leg. It’s your immediate instinct to play up the pain as much as possible, but… oh, it just--never mind, you think irritably. You limp to her without complaint. Nobody looks at Konohana Sakuya when she appears; it’s too much in this dark, dank hole where the blood of this church gathers. Your ankle straightens itself out with a painful _crack_ , and all three of you wince at the noise. Good to know they appreciate your pain.

“Thanks,” you mumble, and grimace.

You take the other side of the angel, but your hands are almost entirely red, and much too slippery. You give an experimental tug. It doesn’t move. Both you and Chie look at each other awkwardly.

“Let’s put our elbows into it,” she mumbles.

She hunches her back, digs her heels into the ground, and strains. The angel rocks, just a bit, but as Chie takes another huge breath, you feel the sudden urge to apologize. It’s not right, you think, to be trying so hard, to be straining and striving and working and breathing. Just let it rest, you think; it’s not all that bad. You pull halfheartedly. It’s enough, anyway; Yukiko yanks her leg free, and the blood sloshes wildly under your feet.

Her leg  seems no worse for wear. When she stands, her entire front is stained red, the tips of her hair are glued together, and she looks down at her ruined uniform with bemusement. She and Chie are a matching set, one bloody down the front, one down the back. It's clean coloration; you don't appreciate the splashes that creep upwards towards your own neck. The three of you stand in a circle, looking at each other’s stains.

“I guess there’s nothing left to do here,” you say.

“I can’t believe…” Chie begins, but her voice breaks.

Yukiko looks down at her feet, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. Chie clutches the sleeve of her own red-and-green jacket. Nobody, not even you, dares to look at it.

“I suppose so,” says Yukiko quietly.

***

By standing on one of angel’s wings, you’re just able to grab the rim of the broken hole in the ceiling. Only Chie is actually capable of doing a pull-up, though, so she ends up having to give you and Yukiko a boost, and follows last to the floor above. The ash sticks all your soggy clothes, the hallway is still wrecked from Tomoe, and Chie’s glasses are covered in blood, but the higher floor actually has dim lighting instead of the darkness of the floor below you, and you’ve honestly never been more grateful of something so small as light.

Nobody takes a moment to get the liquid out of your clothes: you all move as quickly as possible as far away as possible from the large, black hole in the ground. You wring your shirt out as you go; Chie and Yukiko just let their shirts and skirts drip, their shoes sloshing on the pavement.

It’s only when the last cracks from Tomoe’s attack on the hallway have disappeared that Chie clears her throat, warning that she’s about to break the silence before she does (which you appreciate), and carefully asks, “Does anyone know where Yosuke-kun is?”

Yukiko looks around, as if just realizing he’s missing. “He wasn’t… We didn’t leave him back down there, did we?” She says it likes you’ve left Yosuke to die.

“We couldn’t have missed him,” you object. You're not going back there.

“No, I suppose not,” mumbles Yukiko. “Then… he should still be on this floor… right?”

You all look uncertainly at each other. You all seem to be doing that a lot.

“I didn’t exactly see what happened, when…” You gesture to Chie, awkwardly. “When, uh…”

“Do you know what happened with Tomoe?” asks Yukiko.

Chie shrugs helplessly. Nobody questions it.

“Well,” says Yukiko, and looks around at the two of you. It seems to have only just occurred to her that, without Yosuke, it’s entirely up to her to lead the group. “Shall we… go?”

“Yeah,” you say, possibly a little too fast, but nobody questions that, either. Chie wipes her glasses off as well as she can on the front of her jacket, you shove your now-empty hands in your pockets, and Yukiko hesitantly steps forward to lead the way across the shattered and cracked floor. Nobody looks back at the black, looming maw in the floor. It hits you, belatedly, that at the bottom of most old churches, usually lies a crypt.

***

You wander the floor for--you don’t know how long. You don’t have a watch on you. You don’t foresee yourself wearing a watch for the rest of your life.

“Did he walk off someplace?” asks Chie. Yukiko looks doubtfully at the floor. When you pass by the stairs to the next floor, you all pause. “Maybe he went up a few floors?” Chie says, and Yukiko holds her hands out helplessly. The stone angels that frame the stairway is a twin set: a man and a woman, each reaching out for each other across the archway. To pass through, you’d have to avoid their arms.

You would have noticed a statue like that, you think, the first time you’d come down the stairs.

Chie leads you down a different hallway, and you don’t think you’ve been down this corridor before, because you would have remembered the empty cathedral windows that hang on the walls--stained glass art, windows that show show you nothing on the other side, the glass glittering like TV static.

The fog feels thicker than ever, and it’s not nice anymore. You feel claustrophobic, like it could swallow you and make you its own. You want to leave. You hope that damn ghost is happy now.

You pass through another hallway, of which the walls are entirely black. Yukiko lights a small _Agi_ spell by which to see; as you follow Yukiko and Chie, you watch your trio of shadow suspiciously; blink, see four; blink, see three. The hallway ends in another dead end, for which Chie apologizes, explaining that the blood has made the glasses blurry, and she can’t see as far as she did before. Yukiko tells her it’s okay, and they promptly turn around and walk back. But you stay standing under the large arch, looking up at the stone gargoyle carved into the keystone. You saw one just like this earlier, you remember, right after the dice used--oh, what did Yosuke call it?

“That was just embarrassing,” you tell it, low and resentful. “The amount of second-hand embarrassment I felt for you--geez.”

You give your best sigh. You think even the gargoyle was impressed by that one.

“It’s no good to be that transparent,” you say, holding a bloody finger up in a parody of wisdom. “If you really wanna kick the bucket that badly, at least _hide_. Oh, I suppose that was what you were doing before we found you… Still, you could have at least pretended it was for something else. Pretend it was an accident, pretend you were drunk, pretend some invisible person was attacking you, pretend… it doesn’t really matter. Zero out of ten, Namatame-san. What a mess.”

“ _Written in my life_ ,” a voice sighs.

“Adachi-kun?” Yukiko calls back.

You put down your finger. Swallow hard. Scurry away, back into the fog, back to the protection of your senpais.

“ _Mayumi_ ,” it breathes. “ _I’ve lost your watch…_ ”

***

You end up finding, entirely on accident, the actual stairway to the ninth floor. There’s another set of stone angels here: the first angel, a man, his eyes blindfolded and expression skewed with pain, rips the woman’s wings off with one hand and shoves her, between the shoulder blades, down the stairs with the other. The woman’s mouth is open in surprise, but her vocal cords are entirely gouged out.

With the woman’s arms clutching the stairwells, there’s no way around, under, or over them. Yukiko and Chie hurry past. You do not stay with verify what liquid the man’s blindfold is stained with.

***

When you finally find Yosuke in a large, empty room, he is slumped against the wall, headphones tangled beside him, and utterly still. A long streak of blood shines down one half of his face.

“Is Senpai…?” you say, before you shut up, but it’s too late: the idea’s infected everyone else.

“Yosuke-kun?” Yukiko says, horrified.

“H-Hey!” says Chie loudly, and creeps forward. Yosuke’s dyed head doesn’t move. “Hey!” she says, almost angrily, but refuses to go near him. “Y-Yosuke! Wake up!”

He doesn’t move. Yukiko covers her mouth.

“Wake up,” she begs. “Wake _up_!”

Yosuke groans.

“Oh my god,” says Chie, and Yukiko gives a short, bubbly laugh before she covers her entire face in her hands.

“Ow, my head,” Yosuke mumbles, and blinks blearily up at you. “What…” It takes him about two seconds longer to comprehend what he’s looking at, and then he sits bolt upright. “Holy cow, what _happened_ to you guys?! Are you guys okay?!” Nobody responds, and he looks to you. “Adachi-kun, what…?”

“You’re a _jerk_!” Chie snaps, and punches him hard in the shoulder. Yosuke yelps and clutches his arm, protesting angrily, but Chie stomps away to the opposite wall, and crouches into a small ball and buries her head in her arms, showing only the red back of her school uniform.

“Chie--Yukiko-san...?” asks Yosuke, looking vaguely shellshocked. Yukiko shakes her head and doesn’t remove her hands from her face, standing perfectly still. He turns to you. “Adachi-kun…?”

You open your mouth. Nothing comes out.

“C’mon,” he pleads. “What’s going on?”

You look helplessly at Yukiko, but she stands as still as the stone angels. Chie makes herself even smaller.  You swallow hard around the lump in your throat. Make no waves. Let the water lie still.

_The bottom floor of the church--_ you mean to say.

_Nothing left to do here-_ \- you mean to say.

_Let’s just leave_ \-- you mean to say.

You say, voice cracking: “I’m really glad you’re alive, Senpai.”

Yukiko laughs, fractured, into her hands.

***

You take him outside the room. The girls stay inside to--do whatever. Then it’s just you and Yosuke and the headphones he’s replacing around his neck, and the story isn’t going to tell itself. You make yourself comfortable on the ash-covered pavement; a little more soot can’t do any more damage.

“Well,” you begin. “We… found Namatame.”

Yosuke waits. “...So where is he?” he says, when you don’t continue.

You have the crazy thought, for half a second, that you should just offer to show him. No, that means you’ll have to go back yourself, and you’re _not_ going back there. But the word--who made that goddamn word, you think irritably. With it’s soft consonants, the S and C, like brushing the edge of a knife; the nasal I, and the hard D as it hits the ground… It’s too much. But here you are with Yosuke, and he wants to know...

“Adachi-kun?” he says, looking more and more worried by the second.

You swallow hard. “He used Last Resort.”

Yosuke’s nose wrinkles. “He what?”

You look away. You have no idea what kind of expression you’re making, but it feels much too open for your tastes. “Come on, Senpai. Just cut me some slack. I’m… I can’t spell this one out for you.”

“But I don’t know what _happened_ to start with!”

“He used Last Resort,” you say again, whining.

“Like his Shadow came out and attacked you guys?”

“No, he,” you begin again, but stop.

“Then I don’t…”

“He had a gun,” you snap. “And there’s only one thing guns are good for, alright?”

Yosuke recoils, which is satisfying for about three seconds, and then you just feel nauseous again. You have to get out of this place. When Yosuke doesn’t say anything, you scratch the back of your head (only getting blood in your hair) and say, “Sorry for snapping at you. I just… I don’t really wanna talk about it.”

Yosuke’s eyes are still wide, like he’s trying to put together the puzzle pieces in any way other than the right answer. “Okay,” he says weakly. “Um… Jesus. Did you… see… when he...?”

“I guess I should also report,” you say, wrapping your arms around your knees again, “that from what he was saying before he-- _before_ , it sounds like he killed both the enka singer and the news reporter.”

“Oh,” says Yosuke.

“I guess he pushed them in by accident or something. Or maybe he pushed them in intentionally. I dunno, he started monologuing to his wristwatch, apologizing to both of them. He probably didn’t know what the TV world was like, or what happens when somebody ends up inside. A series of terrible mistakes. And then he regretted it tremendously.”

Yosuke shrinks where he sits.

“And, uh, all that on your clothes…?”

“It was just there where we found him. Lots of it,” you say shortly. “Probably came with the setting, like the ash.”

“Okay,” he says again, his voice even smaller.

“Hey, so,” you say, desperate to turn the subject elsewhere. “Why were you so far away?”

Yosuke startles, then looks away quickly. “I, uh, think I walked there. The hallway was kind of a wreck. Do you know what happened with Chie’s Persona?”

“We don’t really know yet, Senpai. Why on earth did you walk there?”

“I couldn’t find you guys,” he says, sounding affronted, but if you’re gonna talk it’s not going to be about Namatame.

“So you walked there, and…” You gesture for him to complete the sentence. “Collapsed?”

Yosuke doesn’t respond.

“...Yosuke-senpai?” you say, suddenly worried.

“I…” He swallows hard and winces, like it’s painful, and turns away. “...I don’t remember. I hit my head pretty hard; I think I... yeah, probably collapsed or something,” he mumbles. He pats his jacket pocket, finds his notebook still there. “Shouldn’t we ask Chie what happened to Tomoe?” he asks halfheartedly.

“If you wanna talk to her right now, be my guest,” you say, mockingly. You _dare_ him; you wanna see that crash and burn.

“No thanks,” he mumbles. “Adachi-kun,” he starts, but stops.

You look at him tiredly. “What?”

He looks you in the eye.

“...I want to go see the body.”

You stand. “ _Absolutely not_.”

“This is important!” he protests.

“For what?” you say, feeling your face on the verge of sneering. “The mystery’s over. We’re going home, where we’ll hopefully take a hot bath and forget all about this. Your pal Narukami-san will figure it out with the police when the body ends up in the telephone wires.”

He looks a bit like you’ve punched him in the gut, but he gets to his feet no slower than you. “I need to, and if you won’t take me, I’ll go myself.”

“Don’t be stupid. You’ll die from Shadows,” you snap.

“I don’t see any on this floor anymore. Maybe they’re all gone now that he is.”

You physically flinch. “And maybe they’re not,” you say instead.

“Then I’m a fast runner.”

“You’re crazy,” you say flatly.

“I need to know if there’s any evidence he left behind,” Yosuke says firmly. “Did you examine the body?”

“No!” you cry. Examine the body after--after what you saw him do? _Fuck_ no!

“Then I have to know,” says Yosuke.

You have the absurd notion that he’s two seconds from getting down on his hands and knees and begging you, and _that’s_ ridiculous, he can’t possibly--but the desperation in his voice can’t be a lie. He looks like he’s been rubbed raw. “We’ve started this, so we have to finish this. I have to know the truth,” he pleads.

You hesitate.

***

“You’re crazy!” exclaims Chie, which is what you said.

“Absolutely not,” says Yukiko, which is _also_ what you said.

“I only need one person to come with me,” says Yosuke. “I don’t wanna drag all of you guys back there, but we should do a buddy system. Here,” he says, handing them the notebook. “The maps aren’t all complete, but the stairs are definitely accurate. All eight floors are there and labelled; I just don’t have the ninth one because, well, obvious reasons. Just meet us back on the first floor or something.”

“We shouldn’t split up,” protests Yukiko.

“Yukiko, I’m not going back there,” Chie murmurs.

“Like I told Adachi-kun,” says Yosuke, “I’m going whether someone comes with me or not. I’ll figure out where it is.”

Chie and Yukiko look at each other.

“I really don’t think we should split up,” says Yukiko again.

“Adachi-kun will protect me,” says Yosuke.

“Ha ha,” you say weakly. You hope he was joking.

“So we’ll be o--”

“ _Please_ don’t go,” Chie blurts out.

She looks like she regrets it as soon as she says it. Even Yosuke looks disturbed.

“I... don’t know if you think is a joke or what,” says Chie, “but--there’s no need. He’s--gone. We can’t rescue him or ask him questions or anything at all. We even know what happened to the news reporter and enka singer. You don’t need to see it. Just stay here.”

“If we’re gonna wrap this case up--”

“You _do not_ ,” Chie pleads, “need to see the body. It’s over. Please, Yosuke, let’s just go home.”

“All of you already saw it--”

Yukiko eyes flash with murderous intent, but Chie beats her to it: “That’s precisely why you shouldn’t. We’ve seen it, and--please, Yosuke. It’s not a matter of squeamishness, or evidence, or getting your clothes dirty--you can’t unsee something like that. Please,” she says, “just stay with us.”

“I--”

“I will _fight you_ and drag your unconscious body with us,” she snaps. “Is that what you want me to say, Yosuke? Would that be normal? That would be great. Just like we’re back at school, right? Everything’s fine?”

When you look back at Yosuke, shocked speechless, you realize with your own surprise: you _want_ him to go there. Wouldn’t that be great, you think savagely; knock the pain right into him, make him realize how badly he’s screwed up. Do it, you think. You _dare him_. And maybe then, you can all feel like it _is_ just another day at school--Chie fighting with Yosuke, Yukiko looking on with bemusement, Yosuke as stupid and clueless and immature as ever.

_Stay stupid,_ you think angrily. _Stay naive and clueless._

_Take the apple,_ you think, ever more angrily. _And we’ll see how you like the hard fall_.

“You’re right,” says Yosuke. “...Sorry.”

Chie breathes out hard. “I can’t believe you,” she mutters.

“Then let’s get out of here quickly,” says Yosuke. He looks over his shoulder. “If there’s nothing else we gotta do, then we shouldn’t stay here.”

You’re, honestly speaking, exhausted. “That’s a _great_ idea,” you say earnestly.

“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said,” sighs Chie. Her fists are trembling.

Yukiko nods, even eagerly. “Let’s hurry,” she says, also glancing over Yosuke’s shoulder. You wonder, again, about if ghosts can exist in the TV world.

“Here,” says Yosuke, fumbling with the notebook and handing it to Chie, “you can take the map. It’ll be faster if you do it, since you have the glasses and everything.”

“Good idea,” you say, and everyone nods. “ _Now_ can we get out of here?”

Chie leads you past the stone angels leading to the upper floor. The male angel still reaches for the woman, but now her arms are missing, her face corroded, her body chipped and cracked; crumbling like sand and salt.

***

And,  of course, Yosuke goes missing on the seventh floor.

“Did we lose him?” asks Yukiko.

“I’m going to _kick his ass_ ,” Chie says, furious.

You blanch. “You don’t think he _went back_?”

“He must have,” Yukiko murmurs.

“I _swear_ \--”

“No, you guys go ahead,” you say quickly. “I can get him.”

“We shouldn’t split up,” says Yukiko immediately.

“We haven’t seen any Shadows, so they must be all gone,” you say; “I’ll be fine. We’ll meet you at the first floor. I’m a fast runner.”

“Adachi-kun--”

“I’ll be back in a sec,” you say, almost cheerily, and turn back for the stairs to the eighth floor.

“Adachi-kun!” you hear someone call, but you run fast and hard. If you’re fast enough, you think, you might be a faster runner than Yosuke. You hope Yosuke didn’t run. What’s the hurry? Namatame’s not going anywhere.

***

The cracked, ruptured hallway is the same as when you left it--the jagged lines in the cobblestones, the barely-stable ceiling, the gouges in the walls, the black hole punctured through the floor. A long trail of bloody footprints that mark the group’s hasty retreat and eventually fading out, all the foot trails intertwining as if a six-legged person passed through. You are very sincerely sorry to see this hallway again, and you stop walking involuntarily.

Yosuke is crouching at the edge of the hole.

“Senpai!” you yell, and break into a run again. “Senpai, wait! Stop!”

Yosuke grimaces, looks down at the hole, and slips inside.

“No!”

You skid to a halt at the rim where Yosuke’s left his shoes; you have half a mind to jump in there with him, but you are _absolutely not doing that_. “Senpai! Please, come back!” You even hold out your hand, as if he’d take it voluntarily.

He looks up at you apologetically; the blood ripples around his bare ankles, his pants rolled up to his knees. “Adachi-kun, I’m have to put this case to rest,” he says, looking up at you through the hole. “If I don’t do this, this is gonna haunt me for the rest of my life.”

You have a few choice words for him about who’s haunting who; you’d very much like to get out of this damn church _now_. “It’s not worth it,” you plead. “C’mon, _please_ , Senpai.”

“You’re not my _mother_ , Adachi-kun.”

“I’m pretty sure your real mother must have told you not to look directly at the sun,” you snap. “And I’m _telling you_ , you don’t look at the sun for a _very good reason_.”

Yosuke visibly grits his teeth, looks out into the darkness, and marches out of your sight.

“SENPAI!”

No response. You slam your fist on the ground. You hope, earnestly and honestly, that whatever he sees down there fucks him up; you hope he goes goddamn blind. You hope he finds not a shred of evidence towards convicting Namatame. You hope he finds his truth entirely, absolutely _worthless_.

Yosuke splashes back into sight not four seconds later. “Are you okay?!” is the first thing you say.

“I haven’t done anything yet,” he says, looking thoroughly harassed, in the same way that a prisoner is cajoled by his inmates before going off to his execution. “What did this place look like when you left it?”

“I’m not telling you. Come back up.”

“I’m already _here_ , geezus, just tell me.”

You stare down at him with pure spite.

“Okay, from what you guys told me before--he was wearing a regular business suit, with a jacket,” says Yosuke, ticking it off on his fingers. “He had leather shoes. He had his gun in his right hand. He put his watch down on a piece of rubble somewhere. You mentioned it was a gift from Mayumi Yamano, so he didn’t want to get it dirty. That’s right so far, right?”

You think of the angels fighting on the stairwell, the man rendering his wife wingless and shoving her into hell.

“That’s right,” you say, and watch as something small gives up in Yosuke’s eyes.

“Right. I’ll go check now,” he mutters, and walks away off into the darkness again.

“Senpai?” you call. There’s no answer. “Yosuke-senpai!” you call again, more frantically.

“It’s okay,” he calls back, sounding… something. “Are you sure that was exactly how it went?”

“Yes,” you say, feeling impatient and foolish for worrying. “Can we _go_?”

“Yeah,” comes the muffled reply, although the voice sounds much closer. “Just… give me a second.”

You peer through the hole, and Yosuke drags himself back into sight, shoulders slumped, and sits in the curve of the angel’s waist. He stares out into the black. Crosses his arms, shoulders hunched. Stares some more. Puts his head in his hands.

You stay far away from the hole and give him his second.

***

Yosuke’s footprints join the trail. He looks, dully, back at the path he’s walked. “Four sets of footprints, huh?” he says, listless, and without waiting much for an answer, hands you your kama (you must have forgotten them in the lake) and starts walking, shoes and socks in hand. His feet, up to his ankles, are the same deep red as Chie’s back and Yukiko’s front and your all over.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

He considers this. It’s not that hard of a question, for god’s sake.

“I didn’t find any evidence that could be used for the investigation,” he says, and hangs his head.

“Oh,” you say. “Too bad.”

“This way?” asks Yosuke, pointing off to the right. You peer down through the fog. You see the faint outline of an arch, the silhouette of a gargoyle; you hear a whisper in your head.

“Nope! Left,” you say. Yosuke goes left, and together you make your way up through the floors in silence.

***

The ash clears up. The rust stains recede and disappear. The stonework becomes a lighter shade of grey, then returns to marble white. The air clears; light glows stronger, purer; the fog becomes its usual clean white. Your clothes dry. The thick coat of blood cracks, and the blood sheds from you like second skin, but the color remains. You can’t see the black from your uniform anymore--it’s all dyed a solid, implausibly bright scarlet.

The first floor is so white and clean you feel a bit like you’ve been punched. How do places like this still exist? God, you realize, only this afternoon you were at _school_. What the hell was the homework for today? You never forget what the homework is. This is surreal.

You and Yosuke wander the first floor until you spot Yukiko and Chie sitting at a fountain full of crystal clear water, under the shade of some strange-looking statue. They both look a bit like drowned rats, with their hair dripping water in their faces and clothes soaked through. You’re busy figuring out that they’ve washed the blood out of their and off their skin when Chie spots you and leaps to her feet.

“You guys took so long!” she says, stomping her way over to you, but once she’s in your face she just looks you up and down, looking for injuries. Her expression is taut with strain. “You’re okay? You didn’t have to fight any Shadows?”

You sigh heavily. “We were right about them. There aren’t any left.”

Yukiko smiles, a tiny bit, and breathes out in relief. “We were worrying,” she admits. “You can wash your skin in the water, but the color doesn’t come out of the clothes. Sorry about that. You can get the ash out, though.”

You sit down on the floor with a groan and lean against the fountain. The statue is, thankfully, not an angel statue, instead featuring a mask and long coat that dips into the water; the placard reads _Izanagi_ , although it’s like no depiction of Izanagi you’ve ever seen before. “My feet are killing me,” you mutter, before you blink and sit upright. “Wait a minute. What’re we gonna do about getting out through Junes? We can’t just walk through the department store with our clothes like this.” And what’re you gonna do about your missing uniform?

Everyone looks at Yosuke. “I’ll do it,” he says tonelessly, and begins washing the blood from his feet.

Chie looks at Yukiko, then pulls away. Yukiko looks down.

“I said you shouldn’t have gone,” says Chie, with a passable attempt at casualty.

Yosuke pauses in scrubbing the red off his feet. “I guess so,” is all he says.

“Did you find anything?” says Yukiko, in a very small voice.

“No,” says Yosuke. “I guess the investigation is closed until further notice.”

“Weren’t you the one who threw up when we were dissecting a frog in science?”

“Yeah,” says Yosuke, and steps out of the fountain onto the white marble. He pulls his socks on over his still-wet feet. “I need to know what size you guys wear,” he continues. “You don’t have to be exact; I’ll just get t-shirts or something. Also pants sizes.”

“Geez,” mumbles Chie, “be a bit more tactful when asking a girl that…”

Yukiko laughs weakly. You know that the smile your mouth attempts looks nothing like a smile.

“I don’t have any money on me,” says Yukiko hesitantly.

Yosuke pulls on his shoes and stands. “I think the leader should be Yukiko-san.”

The look Chie gives him is incredulous.

“Wha--” you sputter. “What’re you bringing _that_ up for? _Now_? Where did _that_ segue come from?!”

“I’ve thought about it, and I think the leader should be Yukiko-san,” he says, and nothing more. He crosses his arms, more defensively than anything, and looks at his own feet.

Chie visibly grinds her teeth. “Okay, what the hell--”

“It doesn’t really matter,” says Yukiko, before Chie can get started. “The investigation is over, anyway.”

The reminder deflates Chie like a popped balloon.

“...Well, for what it’s worth,” says Yukiko, ever the diplomat, even as she visibly sways where she stands, “thank you, Yosuke-kun. I’m… honored you think I am capable of the responsibility, despite my--our… young age.”

“Adults are just older kids, anyway,” he mumbles.

“I still don’t have any money,” says Yukiko, looking vaguely shellshocked.

“I’ve got it,” says Yosuke.

The walk back to the entrance is entirely silent.

***

Yosuke goes out through the TVs. Yukiko, Chie, and you sit in the middle of the target, looking away from the corpse outlines, but also each other. It doesn’t leave a lot to look at. Eventually, you remember you left your schoolbag here, and you pull that over and start ruffling through the pages.

It looks like a foreign language to you. You keep looking through them if only to avoid looking at anything else.

Yosuke comes back in through the TVs, holding a Junes grocery bag with one pair of long pants, one t-shirt, two capris, and two blouses. They are surprisingly color-coordinated and, dare you say, fashionable. They look normal and entirely foreign. “I forgot shoes because I forgot to ask what size shoes you guys are,” he sighs, rubbing his neck.

So there’s another round of people reeling off what size they wear, and Yosuke disappears back into the TV. Yukiko and Chie go off in one direction to change; you in another. You all return to the same spots and the same silence, but now you all look--normal. Yukiko’s hair is dry, and she slides her headband back into place. Chie’s bare arms are entirely spotless. Your own clothes are clean and dry and even comfortable on your skin, like you’ve just taken a bath. Just a group of high school students in casual clothes, barefoot, all sitting in a circle.

Yosuke returns with two pairs of sneakers and one pair of flats. These, also, are surprisingly well-matched. You put them on. You feel like you’re putting a costume, preparing to play Tohru Adachi, and you, the carbon copy, are utterly indistinguishable from the original you’ve replaced.

Once Chie has laced her own sneakers up, the four of you look at each other, all standing in a circle. “...Shall we go?” asks Yukiko.

You all leave your bloody clothes folded neatly in rows by the railing, shoes pointing toes out. It is, you suppose, the closest you will get to Namatame’s funeral. Chie looks down at the neat line; a small graveyard of tombstones made of shirts and skirts instead of stone.

“I shouldn’t be this angry,” she says softly. “But I sort of am. I’m angry I didn’t wake up early enough. I’m angry you broke your ankle and Yukiko got stuck. But I think I’m mostly angry at--at him, y’know? I don’t have any right to be angry. I shouldn’t be blaming him for anything. It sounds like it was mostly an accident, how he--how the news reporter died. I… I don’t know about the enka singer, but…”

She takes a shaky breath. Yukiko’s hands clench tightly around her fans. Yosuke rests his head on his hand like he has a headache, lets his hand slip over one eye.

“That was just cowardly. It’s hypocritical of me to say, but even if you don’t have the strength to resolve it, or even the power to fix it, at least have the courage to face what you’ve done.”

You look down at the row of uniforms, and feel the desperate urge to hide. But you can’t think of a single place left that’s safe.

Chie sniffs loudly, hiding her red eyes, and goes headfirst through the TV; then Yukiko, then Yosuke.

“ _Mayumi_ ,” the fog moans.

You don’t look back.

***

You open the door to your house. Step through. Shut the door.

“I’m home,” you say.

“Welcome back,” comes your mother’s dull response, along with an increase in the TV’s volume.

You look down at your own new shoes. She’ll probably ask about them, and your new shirt, and new pants, you know. You toe off the shoes. You don’t have any socks; Yosuke forgot to buy any. Your schoolbag is unfamiliar in your hand. You look down at the threshold, and step into the living room.

Your mother is currently attempting to fuse with the sofa; she’s slumped deep into its pillows, two empty beer cans on the table and one in her hand. She flips the channel. You stare at the TV; just on the other side of that screen... “How was school,” she asks, absently.

“Good,” you say.

“Working hard on that project?”

“Yes,” you say.

“Good,” she says.

“What are we having for dinner?” you ask.

Her zoned-out expression curdles. “This isn’t a restaurant,” she snaps.

“Sorry,” you say.

“No, I know sarcasm when I--” and she turns out and stops. She looks you up and down. Oh, boy, you think. Here it comes--

“What’s wrong with your face?”

You stiffen. “My--? There’s nothing wrong with my face.”

She’s looking at you like you’re a stranger who’s stepped into her house. “Alright,” she says, looking--wary. “What happened? Spit it out.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Then don’t walk around with that--that face. I hope nobody saw you with that face.”

You pause.

“I saw a cat get hit by a car today.”

She looks at you with confusion, like she has no idea why you’re telling her this; but the puzzle pieces click, and her expression clears into--disgust. “Oh,” she says. “...Sorry to hear.”

She scoots away from you on the couch.

“What’re we having for dinner?” you ask again.

“Cabbages,” she says brusquely, but pauses. “...I can make a side of rice, if you’d like.”

You don’t say anything.

“For god’s sake, Tohru,” she says, “it was only a cat.”

When she walks to the kitchen, she gives you a large berth, like you’re contagious. She puts dishes in front of you and you eat her boiled cabbage, and even the dry rice; then you take a shower, change into your pajamas, and slide into bed. You pull your covers up above your nose to protect as much of your skin as you can, leaving only your eyes to stand guard.

You watch the moon through your bedroom window, and when it sets, you watch the sun rise.

***

At lunch the next day, wearing your spare uniform, you find Yosuke burning his notebook on the school roof.

“Oh, Adachi-kun!” he says, and waves, flashing what looks like his usual salesman smile. He snaps the lighter closed. The fire crackles, small but wild under the afternoon sun, burning its place into the concrete. “Wasn’t expecting anyone up here. I think Chie is spending the day at the Amagi Inn with Yukiko, if you were wondering. I didn’t know you ate lunch up here.”

“I usually… don’t, I eat at my desk, what are you…?”

His smile grows almost fond, almost… melancholic. "Well, I was thinking--we don't need it now that we've caught the killer. I'm certainly not keeping it for find memories. So, if somebody found it, it's just be dangerous, wouldn’t it?"

“O-Oh… I guess that makes sense,” you say, shrugging sheepishly and watching him from under your bangs. “But, Yosuke-senpai--there’s nobody who’d be able to understand that notebook except ourselves and the murderer, right?”

“Just in case,” he says. “You can never be too sure.”

Among the ways to destroy written documents, most can be recovered: submerged in water, smeared with ink, shredded and ripped--all can be pieced back together, restored, treated with chemicals. But fire isn’t a physical change; it’s a chemical reaction, fundamentally changing the paper and everything on it into a substance entirely different. It is surefire, absolute, foolproof. Permanent.

“I guess I wouldn’t want anyone asking strange questions either,” you agree. Yosuke’s teeth show. “But it seems… unnecessary, doesn’t it? All that information you recorded, all those weaknesses and maps…”

Yosuke looks at the little pile of ashes, looking so much like the ash you washed off your clothes yesterday. The last pages curl, glowing at the edges, and finally die. He crushes them under his foot.

“Well,” he says, quietly, “there can be no turning back now.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEEZE
> 
> next chapter we can do something that doesn't require horrible emotions
> 
> like SOCIAL LINKING
> 
> YEEHAW
> 
> and as an additional note, the suicide tag is a blanket tag for the entire fic, by which I mean--it doesn't really go away. sorry, friends


End file.
